The Killing King of Gratis (15 page)

“Looks like the truck angle may be a bit of a dead end. Y’all know the counties around us are nearly empty, and I doubt we’ll turn up anything there, but I’ll check just the same. It won’t be as quick because I’m dealing with other tax offices, but I’ll try.”

“Why don’t you just check with the DMV?” Kero asked, sipping on his beer.

“I’m doing that as well, but some of these vehicles just vanish when the sales aren’t memorialized and the original owners are dead. I’m finding a lot of these older trucks have original owners who are dead and the truck just goes somewhere, whether to a relative or someone else. It gets sold out of state, put in a salvage yard, or driven around a farm. Hell, a lot of old trucks get sold or traded and people drive them around with false tags on county roads. At least the people in the local tax office may have seen some of these. I know the folks in the state offices in Atlanta haven’t.”

“Well, keep it up. Maybe you’ll hit on something.” Delroy admired his thoroughness.

“That’s not all. I have the medical examiner’s report on Althea, if you’re interested, straight from the medical examiner this morning.” He handed Kero and Delroy a copy of the report. Motte didn’t know if Kero understood what he was reading, but Delroy had tried enough murder cases to digest it quickly.

Delroy sat silently as he read the report. It started out giving a description of the general health of the deceased. He wasn’t shocked to find that Althea suffered from herpes and the early stage of hepatitis B. The untreated hernia was also to be expected, as well as the various sores on her body attributed to a lack of hygiene.

The surprise was that this was the sum of her pre-existing medical conditions. She didn’t have hypertension, diabetes, or any other disease that was immediately dangerous to her health.
Damn, she might have outlived us all, if I hadn’t gone to get her help
.

The report then went into the actual injuries on her body. There were no defensive wounds. There were no indications that she was injured during this attack at all except for the fatal blow itself. The only bruise on her body, which the medical examiner had no way of knowing occurred three days prior to death when she fell looking for her pipe, was deemed unrelated to her homicide as it was too old.

The death blow itself was from the crowbar, as was obvious at the scene, and was around eight and a half inches deep. Due to the almost complete transection of the aorta death was instantaneous. The bleed out was quick.

The report went on to note that samples were taken from under Althea’s fingernails as well as her mouth. All foreign DNA samples were hopelessly corrupted by the bleach poured all over the body. “The son of a bitch even dipped her hands in it. He washed her dead mouth out with it,” Delroy whispered.

“Well, that don’t tell us shit.” Kero took another swig of his beer.

“I don’t know about that. Seems to me the dude has some knowledge of how to beat forensics. He knows you better attack Althea when she’s down, because otherwise she’ll fight. He knew where to take Millie and where to stash her body. This guy had some personal knowledge of both Millie and Althea, and damn sure knows this town.” Delroy poured himself another glass of tea and turned to Motte.

“Forget about those other counties right now. See what you can found out about those nine trucks currently registered here. Also, give me the name of every person who ever owned a green Ford pickup truck in this county from twenty to thirty years ago. Hopefully there are some records left. You’re right, not every truck was always kept legal, and there might be some old trucks out there the tax office and DMV doesn’t currently track.”

“What are you thinking?” Kero eyed his friend.

“Well, the killer is sure enough from here. Ain’t no way, high or not, that Althea would’ve let this guy get that close to her if she didn’t know him. No way there wouldn’t be some defensive wounds on her. Hell, she could have beat my ass, and would have a couple of times, if I wasn’t her attorney. I think the green truck was driven by someone around here. Right now, it’s probably in some barn we drive by every day.”

The other two nodded as Delroy picked up his glass of tea.
I picked a hell of a time to cut back on my drinking hobby,
he thought.

He looked down at the autopsy report.
What kind of fury could make a man shove a crowbar over eight inches into a woman’s chest?
The thought scared him. He gulped the last of his tea, wishing he had never gone to see poor Althea.

“
N
ewt MacElroy, you are a good lookin’ son of a gun,” Newt said as he smiled at himself in the rearview mirror of his pickup truck. It was actually his second cousin’s truck, but that didn’t matter as he headed down the road to Savannah. It took every bit of will power, which was almost non-existent to begin with, to keep the speedometer needle south of the speed limit. As he headed through Milledgeville and down to Dublin he wanted the tires to barely touch the pavement.

The last few weeks were tough on a man of Newt’s caliber. He was not made to live in a cabin in the woods. He was not meant to hang out with country boys when there were so many country girls to visit. Newt loved his kin but needed to be out and about amongst the public. He desired it and felt it to be his duty to the rest of mankind, or at least the female half. He also believed he was going to give Merry Clemens the time of her life tonight.
God bless Merry
, he thought.

Newt fairly jumped when he saw that she was calling him, and decided right then he was going to make his first and only road trip of this long summer. He was due for some quality fornicating and drinking. Combining the two with Merry Clemens would be a hell of a way to break his unexpected drought.

Newt and Merry dated in high school. He remembered the first time he met her in Coach Grey’s driver’s education class. While Coach was telling the class to make sure to come to a full stop, or accelerate when entering a highway, Newt was wondering where Merry had been for the first sixteen years of his life. She was tall, with auburn hair and green eyes, and built in the classic Marilyn Monroe way. Newt had an early appreciation of the classics.

Soon they were skipping class together and hanging out after school. She wore his letterman’s jacket and he gave her a promise ring. They were the picture of young love. After a few months, of course, she caught him cheating with a senior named Beth Metcalf.

Beth was in that same driver’s education class with the sophomores, the only senior to ever fail the class two years running. Going down the road, Newt replayed the fight between the girls the day Merry learned that he was sneaking around. Beth was athletic, but no match for Merry’s reach or sheer ferocity. After it was apparent that Beth was not getting up, Merry came after Newt with the same right cross she used to hammer Beth. Unfortunately, Coach stepped into the middle of the fray. He was there to meet Merry’s punch instead of Newt.

Merry was suspended for the rest of the school year and transferred to a school in the next county. Coach got a new front tooth. He was glad that administration allowed his assailant to transfer, although her family remained in Gratis. The rest of the coaching staff gave him hell as it was, being laid out by a sixteen year old girl in his own classroom.

Newt was just glad that Merry didn’t know the whole story.
She would have definitely beat my ass if she knew I got with Beth the night after I first got with her
, he mused going down the road. Newt laughed at his younger self.

A few years after high school, he ran into Merry at a party. After she called him asshole a few times, and after he apologized a few dozen times, they talked. Newt may have been worthless, but he really did like Merry. He got her and enjoyed being with her. She was the one person he kept seeing, off and on, even as he was having his fun.
Maybe she’ll still be around when I’m old and ready to settle down.

He saw her every couple of months, always going to her place in Savannah. Newt could walk around with her there, pretending that he wasn’t just the hired help in a juke joint. He indulged her and believed that he may really love her, whatever that meant. At the time it didn’t mean commitment more than a weekend here and there. Maybe that would change one day.

Merry moved between Jacksonville and Savannah after she graduated high school. She suffered through a short marriage to a marine she met in a River Street bar. She then suffered through an even shorter college career.

For the last few years she was a trucking company’s personnel manager down the road in Hinesville. Manager may have been an exaggerated title, given that the company only had twelve employees. One of her main duties was going with her boss every winter to the trucking convention in Atlanta. He always asked her to share a room. She always replied, “maybe next year.”

On the weekends she often traveled down to Jacksonville to dance at The Gold Club. She could earn more in tips in one night than she did working during the week. It wasn’t the life she dreamed of, but she didn’t know anyone living that life. She was able to support herself and have the things she wanted, and thought that was pretty good.

Newt was someone she never could get enough of. She was able to make him hers for a few weekends every year and found that to be almost enough. She loved walking with him through Savannah’s old squares and past the gated courtyards. He treated her like a queen and she adored him for it. He couldn’t have hurt anyone, and she didn’t care about Millie’s death, anyway. Millie was more attitude than beautiful, in her opinion, and Merry was attracted to beautiful.

She was surprised to find a letter in her mailbox with a telephone number and a note for her to call Newt. It was signed “from an old friend who cares” and said “meet Newt at your place around 8.” She tried to get in touch with Newt immediately after Millie’s death but his old number was disconnected. She called this new number and got an answer on the third ring.

He sounded like the old Newt and told her the police were no longer sure he was involved in Millie’s death. He continued that he was still lying low, but not so low he couldn’t pay her a visit. She smiled at that and told him that eight worked for her and to come to her place. When she told him about the note he laughed. Kero or Delroy must have known he needed a good weekend. They were the only people who had his new number.

Calling in sick to work on Friday, Merry treated herself. Sleeping late, she got up and worked out for an hour at the gym across the street. She was in better shape now than in high school and admired herself in the mirror after her shower. She noted the small wrinkles starting to etch themselves around her eyes and mouth. They needed some work, and Merry made a mental note to dance extra shifts at the Gold Club to pay for it.

After leaving the gym, she walked down to Clary’s and ate a late lunch. She enjoyed eating after the crowd had thinned, allowing herself to linger over the new Cosmopolitan as she ate her omelet. Leaving her magazine for the next diner, she walked down to the City Market and stopped in the Molly MacPherson Pub to get a pint of Guinness. She sat by the window watching the people go by and ordered another pint before she left. Shopping at the market to get steaks for dinner was a woozy affair, and she almost forgot to pick up the Bacardi and Modelo for the evening.

While shopping she felt she was living in a glamorous old movie, a young model in the big city enjoying her life. She wondered whether Newt would be early, anxious for him to get there but happy in the moment. For her this was a rarity.

Merry carried the steaks up to her third floor walk-up, leaving them on the counter of her tiny kitchen after rubbing them with salt and pepper. Before long, the Bacardi was in the freezer and the beer was on ice in a tub on the patio. Finally, she put potatoes in the oven, ready to bake in their foil saunas.

There
, she thought,
this will be nice
. She put on some music, drew a bath, and got into her tub for a long pre-love soak. This was her absolute favorite time whenever Newt visited. The expectation was delicious.

‘So Far Away’ she sang, moving her knee back and forth in the tub, when the doorbell rang. The bathroom digital clock read ’6:27,’ and she smiled thinking how impatient Newt was to see her. Maybe the summer made him realize how important she was to him, how loving one person was enough. Warmed by these thoughts, she draped a towel around her damp body and ran to the front door. She opened the door, ready to throw her towel open as well.

Instead of her Newt, she found a strange man standing in front of her, looking at his watch and holding a large bag. He was faintly familiar, but she couldn’t put his face together with his name. She pulled her towel tightly around her, suddenly feeling very exposed.

“I’m sorry, but I think you must be looking for one of the girls who live downstairs.”

Skipper smiled at her. “No ma’am, I believe I’ve found the right place. Newt should be here shortly.”

“
W
ake up Delroy, your phone is ringing.”

Anna woke Delroy from his slumber on the couch. This was Anna’s fourth night of freedom, and Delroy wasn’t about to let anyone harm her. Tommy’s deputies were outside in their cruisers, but Delroy didn’t trust them not to fall asleep. He felt better with Anna down the hall and himself on the couch only steps away. It helped to have a Glock 9mm resting under the couch and directly under him. Lately he never slept unless that gun was within arm’s reach. He felt like a baby with his woobie.

Anna handed his phone to him as he looked at the clock on her mantle. It was almost four in the morning. All he could think was
please let the children be ok
before he answered.

“Hello, it’s four in the morning, so what do you want.”

All he heard was a raspy sobbing and multiple voices in the background. It sounded like a bunch of drunken frat boys in a cave.

“Seriously, I’m tired. Tell me who you are or I’m going to hang up and turn the phone off. I’m hanging up in three, two…”