Time to take matters into his own hands.
Lou plucked the microphone from the dash, to call in and get the skinny, and somebody cleared his throat. The pudgy officer looked to his left and, for a moment, saw nothing. Then his eyes lowered to the small yet so terribly large figure, grinning up at him maniacally. When the gun butt of Fred’s revolver hit Lou between the eyes with incredible force, the officer froze before pitching out onto the ground, his murderer having to scurry backward not to be under the dead weight before it flopped onto the grass. Lou wasn’t quite dead, starting to rouse, and the little man with the big gun slammed its butt into the back of the officer’s head again and again until it cracked like an egg and bloody yolk ran everywhere.
Chapter 11
In Interview Room A at the rear of the Peachtree Heights PD, at 10:45 PM, Chief Blake Cutter took the chair across from the suspect, Robert Davis of Suwanee, Georgia, and his attorney David Dixon, who’d come up from Atlanta.
The attorney was a dignified salt-and-pepper sixty or so in a tailored gray suit and navy-blue silk tie that together likely cost more than Cutter’s monthly salary. Dixon’s eyes were the same navy blue as his tie, and his heavy black-framed glasses rode above a graying version of Rhett Butler’s mustache. For a man summoned from home so late in the day, he could hardly have made a more intimidating specimen of the legal profession.
“You took my client into custody,” Dixon said, in a smooth courtroom baritone, “at gunpoint, with no explanation other than to say you were holding him for questioning, the excuse being that he didn’t have his driver’s license on his person or in his vehicle.”
Bushy-haired, belligerent Davis, whose deeply grooved face could work up a hell of a scowl, gave Cutter a beauty. “Who do you slobs think I am?”
“Apparently,” the chief said, “you’re Robert Davis and you live in the area, though not in Peachtree Heights or its adjacent communities. You were stopped at a roadblock, were uncooperative, and threatened the officers physically. And, yes, you weren’t able to provide your driver’s license.” To Dixon, he added, “Which all adds up to our legitimately bringing your client in for questioning.”
“Does it?” the attorney said. “My client informs me that your questions ran to matters of murder. Specifically, these physician killings that are generating so much speculation in the media.”
“Who do you slobs,” Davis said again, the bitterness hanging from his voice like icicles from a roof gutter, “think I am?”
“Suppose you tell us,” Cutter said emotionlessly. “Then we can discuss your whereabouts on certain key dates.”
“This,” the attorney told Cutter, “will tell you who my client is.”
From a briefcase, Dixon slid a manila folder across to Cutter, who looked inside at some newspaper clippings. Less than a minute passed before the chief rose and, taking the folder with him, said, “If you’ll excuse me for a moment.”
Cutter joined Detective Hodges and Sgt. Jackson in the observation booth. On the other side of the glass the client and lawyer were exchanging smug smiles.
“We have here a Vietnam veteran,” the chief quietly informed his colleagues, “who, when his rifle team was ambushed, threw his helmet over a fragmentation grenade and his body over his helmet. Saved the lives of eight men and lost his legs in the process.”
Jackson said, “My God.”
Janet stood her ground. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t our man.”
With a joyless smile, the chief said, “Doesn’t it? He lives in Suwanee, where he was born and raised, he’s married with two children, and is definitely not Dennis Lee under an alias.”
“We don’t know for sure,” she said, “that Dennis Lee is our killer either. We need to question Mr. Davis as to where he was on the dates and times in question, and establish if anyone can back him up, and do our damn jobs here, however unpleasant that might be.”
“Understood.” Cutter sighed and started to head back out. “But perhaps you’ll understand why I am less than thrilled about the prospect of going back in there and grilling a Medal of Honor winner.”
Roy was back in his pajamas and Helen in her nightie, his arm around her as she cuddled against his shoulder as they lay there with the covers at their waists. The nightstand lamp continued to provide a modest golden glow.
“How does it feel,” he asked her gently, “to have it all over with?”
“We could go again,” she teased.
He laughed a little. “That’s not what I’m talking about, you nut. I mean, having this damn threat lifted.”
She smiled up at him sleepily. “I know what you mean. But I don’t exactly feel, right now, how you’d think I might feel.”
“Oh?”
“Relieved, of course. So very relieved, but also... I suddenly feel like I’m home.”
“You are home.”
She studied him earnestly. “Am I?”
“You are if you want to be.”
She took a few moments before saying, “The other night I asked you not to go. Remember? But you didn’t stay. You left me here in this bed, alone. You were punishing me for leaving you. You and our son.”
A small nod. “I suppose I was.”
She locked eyes with him. “No suppose about it. And you had a right to get even. But I want very much to live here in this wonderful old house. With you and Richie. I can paint here, and drive down to Atlanta to the gallery when necessary. But mostly be here where I belong — with my two men.”
“Your two men would like that.”
“And, darling, I have to be honest with you.”
“You don’t have to... but I’d rather you would.”
She looked past him. “I think my father was wrong about Richard. About Richie. Granted, our son was premature and slow to develop, and I know he’s behind in many ways, but in others... Is he really even a ‘Special Needs’ child at all? If he is, that’s fine, we’ll love him and I’ll nurture him, I will nurture the hell out of him...”
“Language,” he said with a smile.
That made her laugh a little.
His arm around her brought her even closer. “But, honey,” he said, “Richie does have special needs. A very special set of needs.”
Her expression grew curious. “Oh? What?”
“He needs loving parents,” he said, “who love each other.”
As he moved across the front yard, across the gravel apron by the front porch, Officer Jerry Haines — like his chief, a displaced New Yorker and early retiree — thought he heard something rustling in the outbuilding where the gardening and other household maintenance equipment was stored.
A raccoon maybe, he thought. Or stray dog...
On his way to the glorified shed, the sturdy six-foot officer — blond and boyish at fifty-one — passed by the prowl car that Dickson and Rawley shared, parked near the front gate. He found no sign of either one in or around the vehicle, a fact he confirmed with his flashlight.
That rustling noise got his attention again and he headed for the cement-block outbuilding, to the left of the house as you faced it, set back a little. Though he, too, had heard the radio dispatcher report that a suspect was in custody in the medical murders, he shifted his flashlight to his left hand and filled his right with his service revolver.
The moonlight made him notice something he couldn’t quite figure out — two separate, not-quite parallel grooves in the not-recently-cut lawn, as if perhaps a pair of heavy bags — of seed perhaps? — had been one-at-a-time dragged through there, flattening the grass. These depressions led to, and converged at, that cement-block outbuilding.