‘No… Mama, help…’ he wheezed.
‘You fucking loser,’ Claudia gasped. She hobbled to her feet. Agony lanced her leg, blood greased her skin. She staggered toward the cruiser and threw herself inside, glass from the broken windshield crunching under her. Buddy Beere still lay on his side, the shears protruding from his stomach, mouth a wet ruin from her kick, eyes dimming of life.
Claudia flicked at the radio. It still worked. ‘Officer down… help me… this is Claudia Salazar… with David Power. Officer down… officer down… He’s been shot, gunshot… I’ve been stabbed… suspect is Buddy Beere… I think I killed him… officer down… we’re at Buddy Beere’s house off FM 1223… couple of miles past Port Leo on the right
… 4704 FM 1223… hurry, hurry.’
She clutched her leg. Movement at the edge of her vision. Through the shattered windshield she saw a woman, stumbling from the house, naked, bruised, her face a mass of blue.
The county dispatcher’s voice blared on the radio, telling her to hold on, help was on the way.
‘Velvet!’ Claudia called. ‘Velvet!’
Velvet limped toward the car but saw Buddy collapsed in the shadow of the garage. Claudia, clutching her leg, pulled herself out from the cruiser. Velvet stopped, stared at Claudia, then stared back at Buddy.
‘Velvet, honey, it’s okay…’ Claudia gasped. ‘It’s gonna be okay.’ God, she hoped. She wasn’t sure she could stay conscious much longer. And David, oh, babe…
Velvet knelt by Buddy, yanked the shears out with a decisive pull, tore open the scrub pants, and began to perform crude surgery. In the distance sirens roared in their approach.
‘Velvet! Stop! Stop!’ Claudia called.
The blood flew upward with Velvet’s blows, dotting her face, and soaked the ground.
41
‘I need to talk to Claudia,’ Whit said into the phone.
‘She don’t work here no more. Judge,’ the weekend police department dispatcher, a lady named Trudy, told him. ‘Delford fired her. She went and raised holy hell with the Hubbles, and he canned her.’
‘Hell over what?’
‘That girl they pulled out of the bay… the one that found Pete Hubble’s body, apparently she had something going on with Sam Hubble and Sam’s disappeared, although Delford don’t want to put out an APB. I heard him and Claud arguing about it. Delford’s furious with Claudia, I don’t even dare say her name aloud when he’s around.’ She quickly told him about Junior Deloache, Heather Farrell, all the whirl of death since he left town.
‘God Almighty.’ Claudia fired. Heather and Junior dead. Sam missing. Jesus. His stomach tottered on the lip of a pit. ‘I need Spires’s home and pager numbers.’
Trudy gave him the numbers.
He dialed Delford’s number. No answer. He tried the pager number, keyed in the nursing home’s number, hoping for a quick response.
Think. Think.
Buddy Beere knew about Corey Hubble. Perhaps even assisted in the grand deception. Pete had found out where Corey was and Buddy silenced him. Perhaps silenced Marcy Ballew as well.
But how did Buddy learn that Pete had found Corey? Who knew what Pete knew? Not even Velvet, he’d kept even her in the dark. Not Kathy
… killing Pete meant no money, and Whit didn’t even know if she knew Buddy Beere.
‘They authorized him to be moved,’ Felix Duplessis said again, sitting in his chair, staring at Whit. His face sagged with the worn look of someone who suspects a good day will not come in the immediate future. The call came this morning. She insisted he be moved to a home up in Shreveport immediately.’
‘She?’ Gooch asked.
‘John’s trustee,’ Duplessis said. ‘Laura Taylor.’
‘Let me have her number, please,’ Whit said. Aside from the Austin number was a 361 area code: Texas Coastal Bend.
Duplessis clicked on his speakerphone, and Whit dialed. The phone chirped and a woman’s voice answered.
‘Hello?’
Duplessis said, ‘Miz Taylor?’
A pause. ‘Yes, this is she.’ She sounded tired, anxious, and exactly like Faith Hubble. Whit leaned over the phone, still silent, his eyes closed.
‘This is Felix Duplessis at Memorial Oaks in Deshay. How are you?’
‘All right. Have you moved John yet?’
‘There’s been a delay here, ma’am.’
‘He has to be moved immediately to the home in Shreveport. That’s what we pay for. Immediately.’
‘Well, yes, ma’am, but we’ve had a problem,’ Duplessis said. ‘There’s a gentleman…’
Whit stood by the speakerphone and leaned down. ‘Faith. It’s Whit. I’m here. I found Corey.’
No answer from the other end of the line.
‘Faith?’ Whit tried again. ‘Are you there?’
‘I’m here,’ she finally said.
‘Why does Corey have to be moved so quickly?’
‘I…’
And as soon as he asked the question, he saw his own logic misfire. Pete had died because he learned the secret. The secret the other Hubbles had cultivated and manufactured. But neither Faith nor Lucinda knew of his plans for the movie, that he was blood-hounding Corey’s trail.
Pete would have had only one confidant, one person he needed to turn against the Hubbles.
‘Is it Sam?’ Whit asked. ‘It is. Sam.’
‘He’s run off. He may be on his way there.’ Her voice broke. ‘Whit, don’t let him do anything… stupid. Please.’
‘He killed Pete,’ Whit said. ‘He killed his own father. Goddamn it. Faith. You knew?’
‘If Sam is there… please don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt him!’
Whit turned to Felix Duplessis. ‘We need to move Corey… I mean, John. Or get guards here, one of the two. Now.’
‘Now, wait a second, we just got to get this sorted out…’ Duplessis said, and through the blinds Whit saw a BMW slide crookedly into a parking space, bumping a van. A lanky figure loped toward the nursing home’s front door.
‘Faith, he’s here,’ Whit said. ‘Sam’s just pulled up. Do you know if he’s armed?’
Gooch bolted from the room.
‘Don’t hurt him!’ Faith screamed. ‘Please!’
Whit ran out of the office. He spotted Gooch heading toward Corey’s room, pushing the wheelchaired patients back into their rooms, telling the aides to get them out of the hallway. The aides, collecting the breakfast trays, began to argue with him.
‘Call the police! Now!’ Whit yelled back at Duplessis. His yell made the hallway go silent.
‘Whit!’ Faith screamed from the phone. ‘Don’t hurt him, he’s my baby, don’t…’ and her voice vanished as Duplessis jabbed a button and dialed 911.
Whit reached the lobby just as Sam Hubble, wearing a denim jacket and dark glasses, left the information desk with a nod, heading toward the north ward of rooms.
‘Sam!’ Whit yelled.
Sam Hubble turned.
‘You fucker.’ Sam reached behind him, pulling a Ruger from its tucked spot in the back of his jeans, hidden by a baggy T-shirt. He pointed it at Whit’s head, six feet away. The woman at the information desk screamed and ran down the other hallway.
‘It’s over, Sam,’ Whit said, holding his palms up. ‘It’s over. I just talked with your mother. She wants to talk to you. Give me the gun and let’s go to the office and talk with her.’
‘You fuck my mother so you think you can tell me what to do?’ Sam narrowed his eyes into a hateful stare. ‘I don’t think it works that way.’
He knew, oh, damn. He knew like Corey knew, years ago. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt. Your mother’s on the phone, she wants to talk with you.’
‘I hate you,’ Sam said. ‘Why did you have to come here, drag her into this?’
‘It’s over,’ Whit repeated. ‘The only person Pete would have trusted with the whole story of what he found was you. You’re the only one he would have told, because he wanted you to be with him. He had dirt so bad on your mother and your grandmother that he actually might have won custody from them. So he told you what happened to your uncle Corey, but you decided to side with the home team. Your grandmother and your mother. You didn’t want Pete ruining their lives, so you ended his.’ He softened his tone. ‘It’s over, Sam. Put it down.’