‘Was it Layfield? That’s who Coughlin was protecting?’
He tried to say something more, but it was lost in a burst of choking coughs. He rolled his head to the side and spat. Then he spoke again, so quiet I couldn’t hear it. I bent low, my ear to his mouth. He whispered, ‘Run.’
His face went slack and he was still. I froze up then, stayed crouched next to his corpse for what seemed like a long time. I thought of the wife I’d seen behind him at his cabin.
When I got to my feet, I gazed out across the lake, the sunlight reflecting off it in a blaze of orange-white light. I remembered the words Heinrich Kolkhorst had spoken in irony – ‘
A nice place to do it at least
.’ They seemed even more vicious now.
I walked over and used my handkerchief to pick up Layfield’s revolver – empty. I got wise late: he knew he was out of bullets and that’s why he ran. Barrett must have cottoned to it too. I put it in my jacket pocket and walked back to where Barrett lay. His gun was to one side, his set of keys the other. I pocketed both and bent down to close his eyelids.
Then I went to his car and set myself behind the wheel, seeing his blood on my hands, and the cuts on my wrists that the cuffs had left. I imagined killing Layfield.
If you gaze long into an abyss—
My jaw shook and I gripped the wheel. I started pounding it with my palms. I kept going until I couldn’t hold my arms up any longer.
I draped them over the wheel and sunk my head against my forearms, breathing hard. Barrett’s corpse was still in sight, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I wondered how much of what he’d told me was true. If he really did follow me, or if he’d known something about Layfield all along. Maybe he was always deeper into it than he could admit to himself. He talked as though he was caught up in events, as powerless as a stick in a stream, but Coughlin went a long way to protect him. Made me think Barrett was lying the whole time – to himself most of all.
My breathing started to return to normal. It was then, with the clarity release brings, that I saw a way to make sense of what happened. Why Layfield would have cause to kill Geneve Kolkhorst.
The implications were almost too big to conceive.
It took me more than five minutes to scrub the blood from my hands. The sink in the gas station washroom streaked with red when I was done.
The telephone kiosk outside overlooked the highway, a handful of cars travelling along the blacktop in the glow of the late afternoon sun. The operator connected me to the
Recorder
and I reached Dinsmore at his desk.
‘I’m starting to feel like I’m at your beck and call—’
‘The Kolkhorst girl. Did you look into it?’ I said.
‘As a matter of fact I did. And look, don’t run away with this, but Cole Barrett was in charge of the investigation into her death. But that doesn’t prove—’
‘I already know that. I need the other thing – the trouble she had with Hot Springs PD—’
‘What do you mean you already know? Why the hell have you got me running in circles?’
‘Things are moving fast. This is the whole case, right here, Clyde. Did you look into it?’
‘Yes, goddammit, I talked to some people, but it’s thinner than the eyelashes on a fly. The nurse was accused of moonlighting in one of the hotels for extra money, if you take my meaning. The hospital management got wind of it. Guess they didn’t like how it would make them look – hence they involved the cops. But the PD looked into it, talked to the girl, and they decided the allegation was baseless. Some kinda hatchet job on the part of a boy she’d given the flick to. He wanted to get her the boot from her job as revenge. That was the end of it.’
It came together in my mind like storm clouds closing on the last patch of clear sky. ‘It was Harlan Layfield investigated, wasn’t it?’
‘How— Yes, it was. He was a beat cop at the time. Why in the hell do you keep asking me things you already know?’
Pine Street Hospital; the ‘cop’ who snatched Alice Anderson; Jimmy Robinson’s tip-off, and the nurse who provided it. Harlan Layfield killed Geneve Kolkhorst. She knew him from her time in Hot Springs, and that’s how she could identify him to Jimmy Robinson nine months later in Texarkana, when she spotted him hanging around the day Alice disappeared.
Which meant Harlan Layfield almost certainly killed Jeannie Runnels and Bess Prescott.
Which meant Harlan Layfield killed Jimmy Robinson.
Which meant—
Harlan Layfield killed Alice.
Dinsmore was still speaking, but he could have been across an ocean, he sounded so distant.
I’d sat in Layfield’s car, inches away from him. I’d shaken his goddamn hand.
I doubled over and heaved, still clutching the receiver. Nothing came up.
‘Yates? You hear me? How in the world is that the whole story?’
I wiped the drool from my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘I’ll tell you when I know the rest.’
I cut the call and re-dialled for Hot Springs PD. I asked for Detective Layfield and was told he wasn’t on shift today. I asked for his home address, and the cop on the other end got hinky, answered my question with a question. I hung up.
I dialled again, this time to Sam Masters. When he came on the line, I talked over him before he even said his name.
‘Detective Harlan Layfield just tried to kill me.’
‘Yates? What the—’
‘Cole Barrett is dead. Layfield shot him.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘I’ve got the gun he used to do it. You’ll find Layfield’s fingerprints all over it.’ I fought to keep my tone level, the anger seething just under my skin.
‘Why? I don’t— What in god’s name is going on?’
‘I was two seconds from taking a bullet. Barrett saved my life and Layfield killed him for it.’
‘Why would Layfield want you dead?’
I barely knew where to start. I decided to hold back what I knew until I could make sense of it. ‘No clue. Is he on Coughlin’s payroll?’
‘His name’s never come up, but anything’s possible with Teddy. Even so, these are some wild claims. You need to take a minute. I had a man look into your story, about the call from Coughlin’s office on the night of the fire. It checks out.’
Dinsmore’s tip, corroborated. ‘Is that your way of saying you believe me?’
‘Where did this all happen?’
‘Lake Hamilton.’ I reeled off the route we’d driven from town. ‘Barrett’s body is still there.’
‘All right. Now if you’ve got the evidence like you say you have, let’s get it to the proper authorities and we can start putting this thing together.’
‘Is there a single damn cop in this town that isn’t crooked? Someone who could bring Layfield in?’
‘What? Of course, maybe, but—’
‘Good. Then you set him on his tail and hope he finds him before I do.’
Barrett’s face haunted me as I drove; all the blood, and still it wouldn’t stop coming. I looked at my hand on the wheel, saw there was still some under my fingernails. Maybe you never can wash it all away.
I saw now that the nightmare had never stopped, but unpicking it was a different matter. Everything started with Alice; Layfield killed Kolkhorst and Robinson because they knew about his involvement in her death. Had to be. But that left more questions than answers. What did Jeannie Runnels and Bess Prescott have to do with it? Why would Coughlin protect him for their murders? And what was Layfield doing in Texarkana in the first place?
Faces mingled in my mind; Coughlin, Layfield, the two hovering like spectres. Then Barrett, Sam Masters, Alice. Ella Borland.
That last one lingered. Even though she’d turned me in, I couldn’t shed my fears for her safety. What she’d done felt like a betrayal, but I looked at it from her perspective: a man wanted on a murder rap telling her to skip town because her life was in danger. And what if she hadn’t called the cops? What if she’d called Layfield – knowing damn well what he intended to do? The memory of her face stayed with me, that look of guilt as she’d stood in front of me while he cuffed me – as if she was forcing herself to watch as a punishment. It sounded crazy, even to me, and I wondered if it was the product of a paranoid mind, seeing conspiracies everywhere. Another step in Robinson’s shadow.
I pressed my foot down, tearing up the miles back to town. I followed Central all the way north, along Bathhouse Row to the Arlington, any pretence at moving covertly now abandoned.
I parked on Fountain Street by the side of the hotel, in a spot that afforded a view along the main drag. I took out Barrett’s gun, held it in my lap and opened the cylinder. There were three bullets chambered. I remembered Ella asking me before if I was driven by revenge, and me denying it as firmly as I could. Maybe it was true then. Seemed like a memory from a different lifetime now. Alice’s killer. The thought of having to tell Lizzie made me sick. I sat there terrified by my own rage, no longer sure what I was capable of.
I hunkered low, time my enemy, praying no cops would stumble across me before I could make my move. I tried to focus on what was coming, rehearsing how it would play out, hearing Sam Masters warning me against
rash undertakings
and thinking that description didn’t nearly come close.
My concentration faltered. I steeled myself by going over it all in my mind. Run it back, the start: Layfield was there when Alice disappeared. Either he killed her, or he delivered her up to the men that did. Winfield Callaway as good as admitted to me he’d ordered her murder – but what the hell was his connection to Layfield? The only notion I could come up with was that Callaway had given the job to Bailey, and he’d contracted it out to Layfield – somehow known to each other on the cop grapevine. It made sense; Bailey would have needed someone who could snatch Alice from the hospital without being recognised, so an out-of-towner would fit the bill; he never could have reckoned on Ginny Kolkhorst being able to recognise Layfield. But the idea of a network of corrupt cops that reached far beyond Texarkana summoned back that urge to turn tail and run. It felt as though I’d charged into something that was bigger and deeper than even my worst fears.
That meant Layfield was the key to everything that had happened since. I remembered Cole Barrett’s words, about how they killed Jimmy, ‘
to protect the story
’ – Glover, Barrett, the whole frame-up. I believed that to be true now. Coughlin orchestrated the whole deal and the more I thought about it, the more a motive became clear: they had to kill Robinson because he was the only man cared about the cover-up. The only man could follow Layfield’s string of murders all the way to Coughlin’s door.
The only man apart from me.
The last of the light was fading. If Layfield was smart, he would have reported Barrett’s death by now; got himself out in front of it so he could shape the investigation. He could lay out a version of events where I’d killed Barrett, and probably tried to kill him too. How we’d wound up out there by the lake would be a problem to explain, but it was his word against mine, and that was no contest. If that was the case, figure the first cop that saw me would shoot on sight. Whatever the official orders that were issued, there wasn’t a lawman in the country that wanted to bring in a cop-killer alive.
That was assuming Layfield had talked. Could be he’d gone to ground and was planning to finish the job himself – that way forestalling any awkward questions about Barrett’s death. Somehow, that possibility was more unsettling – a killer lurking in the dark, waiting on his chance to put a bullet in my head. Layfield’s words on the jetty came back to me: ‘
You know it all already
.’ A taunt that I didn’t understand then; now, the dread feeling that I’d been blind and people were dead on account of it.
It might not even be Layfield that came for me. I’d seen the price a life went for in this town, and it wasn’t more than the coins in your pocket; any man I passed on the street could be there to stick a pistol in my stomach. No way was I going to sit around waiting for a bullet to find me. My action was justified. Layfield and Coughlin were two heads to the same serpent. But one of them was easier to get at than the other.
It was fifteen jittery minutes before Coughlin’s horses came into view, their hooves clacking on the asphalt.
He slowed as he drew up in front of the building and that’s when I moved. I crossed the sidewalk onto the side terrace of the hotel, then made my way along it to where it came out by the top of the staircase at the main entrance. Roman arches lined the walkway, giving me some cover. When Coughlin appeared at the top of the steps, I dipped my hand into my pocket and wrapped it around Barrett’s gun. I walked up to him with my free hand extended to shake. He took it before he’d even looked at me – just another voter to glad-hand.
I leaned close, flashed the gun just long enough for him to get a glimpse. ‘Walk with me or I use it. Don’t make a scene.’
He kept smiling and pumping my hand. There was confusion on his face, and a flicker of disappointment made me realise I’d wanted to see his fear. An ugly thought flashed through my mind: pull the trigger. It jolted me enough I almost let go of the gun.
He dipped his gaze and then looked at me again. ‘This a joke?’
I tightened my grip on his hand. ‘I think you know I’m serious. This way.’ I pointed back along the side terrace.
He started walking slowly, keeping the politician’s smile on his face even as his eyes darted about. ‘Do you really mean to kidnap me, son?’
‘I already have.’
‘This is my town. You harm me and you’ll be dead within the hour.’
‘I’m already on borrowed time.’
We made it as far as the car with no trouble, my collar damp with sweat. I opened the passenger door and ushered him inside, made him slide across behind the steering wheel, then climbed in next to him and took the gun out of my pocket to hold on him. ‘Take off your hat and your jacket and put your hands on the wheel.’ Any passing cop would still make Coughlin in a second, but stripping him of his signature getup at least made him harder to recognise from a distance.
He glared at me as he complied, defiant, but I saw his hand shake as he removed his hat.
I trained the gun on him, keeping it low so it couldn’t be seen from outside. ‘Harlan Layfield just tried to kill me, and you ordered the fire that killed my friend at Duke’s. I want to know why on both counts. You can skip the part where you make like you’re not involved.’
He turned his eyes to the windshield, flaring his nostrils. ‘I’m expected at dinner. In five minutes, people will be tearing up the place looking for me.’
‘You might not live that long.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Cole Barrett is dead. Layfield killed him.’ He turned his head at that, looking at me sideways with his mouth ajar. ‘Figure that wasn’t part of the plan.’
He looked away again.
‘No sentiment for your bagman?’
I saw the muscles in his throat tighten. ‘Is that true?’
‘We’re sitting in his car.’ I pointed to my shirt where it was smeared red. ‘This is his blood. I couldn’t save him.’
He glanced at the stained fabric. ‘That doesn’t prove anything.’ He lifted his chin to stretch his neck and I saw him swallow. He acted calm, but I could smell his body odour, the potent kind brought on by fear – sweat flooding his armpits and soaking his shirt. ‘If there’s a lick of truth to this, it sounds to me like your grievance is with Detective Layfield.’
‘I’ll get to him. Start talking.’
‘Whatever you’ve been told, you’re misinformed. I don’t know—’
‘I’ve had my fill with being lied to today. I know you’re protecting Layfield, so you tell me the truth, or I’ll put a goddamn bullet in you.’
‘If you meant to kill me you’d have done it already. You’re a reporter, not a killer.’
The last part almost derailed me – a veiled admission he knew damn well who I was and what was spurring my actions. Stupid of me to ever think I’d been moving unnoticed. ‘Killing you isn’t the only avenue open to me.’ I put the gun to his knee.
He tried not to squirm in his seat. ‘You don’t have the first idea what you’re doing.’
‘That right? Try this: I’ve got the gun Layfield used to kill Barrett.’ I swivelled towards him. ‘What happens if I hand it over to Samuel Masters and his men? When they catch up with Layfield, you think he’ll go along quietly? We both know you’re the prize they really want. What do you think they’ll offer him to start singing?’
He looked me over, took in the torn and bloodied shirt I was wearing, the red veins threading my eyes, the mud-splattered gun I was holding on him. Figure he was sizing up the chance I was bluffing. ‘You’ve got me all wrong.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What if we could help one another?’
I opened my mouth and closed it again, caught off guard.
‘Layfield’s been a pain in my ass for longer than I care to think about.’ He looked at me again now, full in the face. His eyes were clear, his gaze steady. ‘I can deliver him to you.’
For a second I was back on that jetty; I felt the tip of Layfield’s gun touch my skull again, and with it, that echo of a memory I couldn’t quite grasp. I blinked, dismissing it. ‘It was on your say-so, goddammit.’
He was shaking his head before I even finished speaking. ‘You talk as though he’s my concern, but you’re misguided. Cole Barrett was a good man and a fine public servant. If Layfield killed him as you say, we have a common problem. I’m offering you the chance to solve it.’ He opened his hand on the wheel, flexing his fingers. ‘Do we understand each other?’
His chutzpah left me reeling. The ultimate expression of his ‘
Get along by going along
’ bullshit; shake his hand and we’re on the same side. I wondered if this was how it started for Barrett, even Layfield – a dirty deal with Coughlin, borne out of anger or greed, that brought on the kind of moral decay that can never be reversed – and left them in his pocket. Even with that thought in mind, the part of me that wanted retribution on Layfield screamed to tell him yes.
‘You gone quiet on me.’ He cocked his head. ‘Maybe not the tough guy you thought you were. You want to run on home, instead?’
He read my self-doubt as plainly as if I’d spoken it. I understood his power then: a gift for pinpointing a man’s weakness and exploiting it for himself. ‘Don’t sit there making out like this has nothing to do with you. You’re neck deep in this.’
‘Look, son, you’re the man with the gun, so I’m not about to sit here and try to hoodwink you. But get your facts straight before you start making accusations. Harlan Layfield’s troubles are of his own making, and he’s about run out the string. Now you can do something about it, if you’re so inclined.’
‘You son of a bitch, you could have done something any time you wanted. You protected him, goddamn you.’
‘I confess I gave him some rope. No more than that. And if Cole Barrett is dead because of that decision, then it’ll sit heavy on my conscience.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A jolt of panic hit me, the fear that I’d got it all wrong. ‘I know what you did. You ordered the fire and you covered it up. I’ve got multiple sources—’
‘You have evidence?’ He looked at me dead on. ‘Or hearsay?’
I glared at him, the jolt getting worse.
He let out a protracted breath. ‘Look, I know Masters and his kind been in your ear telling you I’m responsible for everything bad happens in Hot Springs—’
‘It was Barrett gave you up. Not Masters. He told me you ordered the fire. And I know you called the fire chief the night it happened. You can’t wash your hands of this.’
Instead, he held them up. ‘I’ll never repeat it outside this automobile, but if it’ll satisfy you, I’ll admit to that telephone call. You’re a man of the world, surely you can understand an act of political expediency.’
‘Call it what you want. You had a murder written up as an accident.’
‘There’s an election right around the corner—’
‘You trot that line out like it justifies anything.’
‘That fire was Layfield’s doing alone.’ He stabbed his finger into his palm as he said each word. ‘Whatever went on between Layfield and your friend, I wasn’t a party to it. Yes, when I found out what happened, I put politics first and called in a favour to get the can kicked down the road. But walk a minute in my shoes: if I’d have went calling for an investigation into a senior detective on
my
police force, my enemies would’ve beat me down with it. Masters and his GI boys are relentless; you can’t understand what they’ll do to this town if they win. Every second man will be out of a job and the Negroes will be running wild. The Lord didn’t create me perfect, but whatever decisions I made were for the civic good.’
‘Letting a killer walk in the name of votes?’
‘Not walk. I was fixing to deal with him after the election; all I did was forge myself a little breathing room.’ He went to rub his forehead, then turned to me, uncertain, as if asking for permission to move the hands he’d already taken off the wheel – a subservient gesture that rang hollow.
I pressed the gun harder against his knee. ‘Barrett told me it was on your orders.’
He winced, holding up his hand to back me off. ‘Cole blamed me for the upshot of the Glover case. He felt like I sold him down the river when I bailed him out with Masters. Consider that when you’re chewing on what he said.’
I locked eyes with him. It was all so plausible: Coughlin the public servant, a victim of forces beyond his control. And it made a mockery of all the people that were dead because of him. He’d made a slip without realising it, and now I had him caught in his own lies. ‘I don’t trust you.’
‘I take exception to you looking at me like I’m the devil in a dress shirt, when you’re the one holding an elected official at gunpoint. Reflect on that, young man. You’ve put yourself in a bind and I’m offering you a way out of it.’
It was a trap, I had no doubt of that. But I couldn’t see a better way to get to Layfield than to ride it out. I looked past him, gazing into the darkness of the small park on the other side of the street, as though I was considering my options. ‘You expect me to believe you’d just serve him up?’
‘He has to be dealt with.’
‘You’d put a bullet in me the second it was done.’
‘I’m not the man you think me to be. I considered Cole Barrett a friend, even if it wasn’t reciprocated at the end. Far as I’m concerned, taking Layfield off the board is doing the Lord’s work.’
‘What about your precious election?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you offering to wait that long?’
I didn’t answer.
‘I thought not,’ he said. ‘Hell, I’m old enough to know expediency is a shifting beast by its nature.’
I kept silent a moment longer, then said, ‘You know where he is?’
‘No, but I can find him.’
‘How?’
‘I’m the goddamn mayor of this town.’
‘How long?’
‘Couple hours should be sufficient.’
I rubbed my neck – part for show, part because I felt as though I was burrowing into a scorpion’s nest. ‘Drive then. You’ve got calls to make.’
‘Drive where? You let me go, I’ll find him and tell you where he’s at.’
‘No. You produce Layfield, and I’ll let you trade places with him. Those are my terms.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ He kept his eyes on me, measuring me, then realised I was serious. He made to protest, but relented and started the engine. He acquiesced too fast; it felt like a show.
He pulled slowly away from the kerb, turning north onto Central and taking us away from Bathhouse Row. It was dark now, enough that I was confident we wouldn’t be easily noticed in the car.
‘Where are you heading?’ I said.
‘My house. I keep an office there, we won’t be disturbed.’
‘No one’s home?’
‘My wife will be at the country club till late.’
I stared hard at the side of his face. ‘If this is a trap, you won’t make it out of this car.’
He glanced at me. ‘At some point, we gonna have to establish a level of trust here.’
I looked away.
We passed the Majestic Hotel, its name spelled out in giant letters across the roof, and after that there were no more grand buildings, only houses dotted up the embankment on the side of the road.
‘What happened to Cole?’ he said.
‘He took a bullet that was meant for me.’
He shook his head in disbelief, taking it in. ‘So he saved your life.’
I kept my eyes forward. ‘Just drive.’
We rounded a shallow bend. ‘Was it quick? His passing?’
I nodded so he could see, and said nothing more. But the question played on my mind. It seemed like seconds to me, but what about to Barrett? Feeling his life slip away as fast as blood spills. Did desperation and regret make the seconds stretch? Maybe the way it goes for all of us. It was unsettling to think about, given the razor’s edge I was walking.
We carried on north in silence a few minutes, the air in the car thick with tension. We passed unlit residential streets and a liquor store with a green neon sign that was on the fritz. Soon we left the town behind and the darkness of the countryside enveloped us, only the occasional light from a farmhouse visible. Maybe a mile out, we turned off onto an isolated road that led up a low hill. As we climbed, he said, ‘Does it trouble you that Cole took that bullet in your place?’
There was no change in his tone when he asked it, but I would have sworn he was prodding at me.
We drew up to a house – a large three-storey redbrick, recently built by the look of its pristine roof and paintwork. A turning circle took us right up to the door. He stopped the car outside it and waited. ‘Well?’
I looked at the house. Two bright porch lights lit it from the outside, but all the windows were dark. I stepped out and made him do the same, keeping the gun on him all along. ‘Let’s go.’
He went to the front door and opened it. I followed him through the doorway into a foyer dimly illuminated by overspill from the porch lights.
‘This way.’
He led me down a tiled hallway lined with artworks I couldn’t make out in the dark. At the end of it was a heavy wooden door that he unlocked and pushed open. On the other side was a long and narrow office packed with papers, files and legal texts. A mahogany desk almost blocked off one end of the room. He went around behind it, took a cigarette from a silver case on the desktop, lit it and took a drag. Then he pointed at me with the end of his smoke. ‘We have an accord, you can put the gun down now.’