Revenant (23 page)

I put the wine down on the coffee table. “Would you say his conduct was abnormal?”

She laughed. “It's a shame when you have to label a man who doesn't come on to you as abnormal. Let's just say the girls preferred Jimmy to the other security guards. They were always ass-grabbing and saying things they thought were funny and weren't.”

“Was he normal?”

“A couple of girls figured he had some problems. You know, couldn't get it up.” She stood. “He didn't seem interested in the dancers or the girls. But like I said, he had a fiancée.”

“Did you ever meet her?”

She shook her head. “She never came to the Gold Rush. She was attached. It was a party place for single women.”

I rose. “Stella, do you think Jimmy could hurt anyone?”

She thought about it. “Maybe. When he talked about the things his father did, he seemed to get a rush, you know. Like chopping those ears or torturing people got him off.” The look that crossed her face was telling. “Like hurting people was sexually exciting for him. Honestly, he was a little creepy.”

O
nce I was home, I put the matchbox on the kitchen table and stared at it. The blackened matches reminded me of two dancers, one holding the other in a graceful arc. I was mostly over my anger. What was left was a cold desire for revenge. Jimmy Riley had something to hide or he wouldn't have tried to frighten me off the story. Now I'd discover his secret, by means fair or foul. He'd chosen the rules of the game, and I was more than ready to play.

After Annabelle's death I'd broken. Guilt and shame and loss had dropped me to my knees. By the time I was strong enough to seek revenge, the trail was cold. Arson investigators had established that the fire was deliberate. The men I knew to be responsible had presented airtight alibis. Certainly they hadn't struck the match, but they'd paid an arsonist. They'd killed a nine-year-old girl, my beautiful daughter, without a single charge brought against them. There was no physical evidence linking them to the fire. That I knew they were guilty counted for nothing.

Rage is too weak a word to describe the emotion that swept over me. Jimmy Riley had made the biggest mistake of his life.

My message light was blinking, but I ignored it, picked up the phone and called Kev Graves.

“Hey, Carson, glad you called me back. I have the photos and video. It's pretty explicit and there's no mistaking the doctor.”

“Good work, Kev. I'll drive over and pick it up.”

“No point in that—I can mail it.”

“I have something I'd like for you to run through the Mobile PD for prints. Can you manage that?”

He hesitated. Kev took his job seriously. Sometimes the line between right and just was too narrow. This was one of those times. He knew I'd never ask unless it was important.

“Someone threatened me today,” I said. “They used matches. There was a note telling me my questions were dangerous. A lot like the note I got before Annabelle was killed.”

“Shit.” His breathing was harsh. “Bring it in. I'll run it for you.”

“This could come back on a high-ranking official in the Biloxi PD.”

“I don't care if it's St. Peter. If he's threatening you with a fire, I'll break the bastard's neck myself.”

Kev took his job seriously, but he took his friendships seriously, too. “I expect this will come back clean, but I have to know, and I can't trust the cops here.”

“Whatever you need.”

“I'll drive it over this evening,” I said. “What do I owe you, Kevin?”

“The promise that you won't show this tape to Dorry unless you have no other choice.”

“That goes without saying. Now how much?”

“I won't take money, Carson. But if you decide to confront this prick of a husband, let me know. I want the pleasure of holding him for you.”

“You're the best, Kev. Will seven be okay?”

“I'll be waiting.”

I hung up and went straight to my answering machine. There were three new messages. I hit Rewind and played them back.

“Hello, Carson.” My breath caught at the sound of Daniel's voice, and I missed him so suddenly and so intensely that I felt sick. “I'm home in Miami. I think we should talk. In person. I'm coming to Biloxi this week. Call me and let's find a good time.”

To say that I longed for him would be accurate, but the tenor of his message gave me warning. This was “the talk.” He'd found someone he was interested in. He was coming to tell me face-to-face, as honor dictated. I knew it as certainly as I knew my name. With this talk, he would sever himself from me forever, and I wouldn't stop him. I loved him enough to cut him loose.

The second call was from Kev, letting me know he had the photos.

The third message was unexpected. The male voice sounded hesitant, afraid. “Uh, Ms. Lynch. The dead girl is Tammy Newcomb. Please. Find out who killed her.” The caller hung up.

I replayed the message four times, listening hard for something in the voice or the background noises that would give me a clue as to the caller's identity. I didn't think it was the killer, but I couldn't be sure. I knew for certain it wasn't Jimmy Riley.

I picked up the phone to call Avery, then put it down. Instead, I got the phone book. There were seven Newcombs listed. One was T. Newcomb on Lavender Road just off Biloxi Beach. The address was an apartment complex, Woodland Vale. Right. They'd bulldozed all the trees when they built the complex. I drove back across the bay to Biloxi.

At the manager's desk I pretended to be a friend of Tammy's from out of town. He told me she was in 133 in Block D. I found it without trouble and tapped on the door. My hope was that a young woman would answer and tell me that she was Tammy Newcomb and that she was perfectly fine.

No one answered my knock. When I tried the doorknob, it opened. I stepped inside.

The windows of the apartment had been left open, and a gentle breeze lifted the sheers in the living room. In the semidarkness, they looked like ghosts hovering near the walls. The apartment was so silent that I could hear the beating of my own heart. I had the sense that someone lurked in the shadows. I took two steps inside and the door creaked closed behind me of its own volition.

I knew by looking at the furnishings that Tammy was young, and she was just starting out on her own. There was an innocence about the place that touched me. A photo on an end table caught my eye, and I picked it up. A cute young woman and a man were posed together. He held her hand, which sported an engagement ring. It was obviously the photo that had run in the newspaper announcing their impending marriage. I knew then that Tammy Newcomb was dead.

As I started to put the picture back I saw her answering machine had at least one message. Using a pencil to tap the buttons, I rewound the tape and played it.

There was a beep and the recorded voice of the machine. “One new call, 10:45 p.m., Friday.” Static and background noise blurred over the tape. At first, I thought there was no message, but then I realized someone was whispering. I rewound the tape, turned up the volume and listened more closely.

“You'll make a lovely bride until innocence turns into deceit.” The last word was almost hissed and it lingered in the stillness of the apartment.

Behind me, something crashed to the ground. I dropped and rolled, banging into the sofa as I scrabbled to regain my feet and look behind me. It took a few seconds to realize the curtains had blown into a vase of flowers. Water dripped onto the floor.

My hands shook as I rewound the tape and played it again, writing the exact words on a pad. I had to call Avery. There was no choice, but I was certainly going to get everything I could first. I could no longer act on the belief that the Biloxi Police Department was investigating this case in an unbiased way.

I checked the tape again to be sure there were no other messages from previous calls that might tell me a little more about Tammy Newcomb. There was nothing. I punched the machine off. The voice had been smooth, confident, chilling. I wondered if this was the last message Tammy Newcomb had heard before she died, or if she was already out Friday night and had never heard any of it. Was it the voice of the young man in the photo with her? Her fiancé? It didn't seem to fit him. This voice was rich, low, experienced with life…and death. The young man in the photo was callow and youthful.

My legal obligation was to call the police, except I'd found myself in a situation where the cards were stacked. I'd have one chance and one chance only to find out what I could before anyone else.

I knocked on the door of apartment 135 and listened to the rustling of papers before the door cracked open on the face of an older woman. She had a chain on the door, and she peered through the crack.

I told her who I was, showed her my business card and talked through the crack for a few minutes before she felt comfortable enough to open the door. Her name was Gladys and she'd lived beside Tammy ever since the young woman had moved there from Kansas.

“Why are you interested in Tammy?” she asked, worry touching her face. “She's a lovely young girl. Down here on her own, too. No family or anything. Just her fiancé.”

Gladys was going to be a gold mine of information. I just had to take it slow and let her talk. Sweat trickled down the back of my shirt and into my slacks. Time was the one thing I didn't have. My anonymous caller may have called the police, too.

“Do you know her fiancé?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light and casually interested.

“Oh, yes, Harvey is a nice young man. Of course, we don't really like it that he's a blackjack dealer over at the Grand, but at least he has a job. Nowadays young folks have to take what they can get. Jobs don't grow on trees.”

“That's true.” I smiled. “Have they set a date for the wedding?”

“That's why Tammy is down here. Her folks didn't want her to come until after the wedding, but she wanted to get a job herself, and they've been looking for a house to rent together. Both of them in apartments is draining them financially, but Tammy won't move in with Harvey until she has that wedding band on her finger. That's a smart girl.”

The image that leaped into my mind must have shown on my face.

“Is something wrong with Tammy?” Gladys asked. “She's not hurt, is she?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Why are you here asking all these questions?” She put it together. “That dead girl they found, is it Tammy?” Her voice rose high, and I heard furniture moving in the apartment. A male voice from behind Gladys asked what was wrong.

“There's a reporter here asking questions about Tammy.” Gladys's voice rose higher and higher. Horror played across her features as she contemplated what might have happened to the neighbor she'd grown to like.

The door opened wider and a burly man in his mid-fifties wearing a white T-shirt stepped forward. “Can I help you?”

I introduced myself again and explained that I was trying to find Tammy's fiancé and any information I could about Tammy.

“I'm calling the police,” he said. “If there're questions to be asked, they should be doing the asking.”

“What's Harvey's last name?” I asked Gladys since I knew her husband wasn't going to tell me another thing. I'd upset his wife and he didn't like it.

“Bailey,” she said. “Harvey Bailey. He's from up around Tupelo, Mississippi. Or at least that's what he said.” She was trembling. “Harvey wouldn't hurt a fly, though. And certainly not Tammy. He loves her.” The last sentence became a wail. She turned into her husband's broad chest.

“I'm calling the cops,” he said again before he slammed the door.

Good, I thought as I left Block D and headed back to the apartment complex office. If they called the police, I wouldn't have to.

The young man behind the counter was fairly easy to intimidate. I normally preferred the soft approach, but at any minute I'd hear the sirens. I wanted to be gone from the scene, on the off chance that Avery would try to arrest me. I didn't have time to waste in jail.

The clerk tried to hold firm, but between the pressure I applied and his desire to have his name in the paper as part of a big story, I got Tammy Newcomb's information, including her parents' names and address in Paradise, Kansas, and the fact that she worked as a graphic designer at a small public relations firm in Gulfport. Tammy had turned twenty a few weeks before, and she was a quiet girl who paid her rent on time.

I checked my watch. It was after four. As I was leaving, I heard the sirens. I went out the back exit. Using my cell phone, I called the Grand Casino. Harvey Bailey was on the floor. His shift was over at nine, but I didn't have time to wait. He was my most likely suspect as the man who'd called and left me an anonymous message.

It took about twenty minutes to drive to the casino and park. I found Harvey dealing at a table. I watched him from behind a bank of slot machines for a while. He was courteous to the players but subdued, a man who kept looking at his watch and then scanning the crowded floor of the casino. He was expecting trouble, and it would no doubt arrive. I walked over and took an empty place.

“Hi, I'm Carson Lynch,” I said. His hand on the cards froze. We stared at each other for a moment.

“Excuse me,” he said to the man and woman who were ready to play, “I have to close this table.”

“Hey, I'm on a streak,” the man complained.

“I apologize. I'm feeling ill,” Harvey said, and he looked as if he might be sick at any second.

He stepped out of the pit and I followed him through the maze of clinking, blaring, whirring machines to the employee lounge. He leaned against a wall. “I can't lose this job,” he said, unable to look at me. “My fiancée is dead, and I'm having to deal cards to assholes because I can't lose this job.”

“Why are you so sure it's Tammy?” I asked. There was no doubt he was my caller. I recognized his voice.

“She didn't call me Friday night. Or yesterday. Or today. She's not like that. She's not that kind of person. I knew something terrible had happened to her, and then I heard some folks talking about a dead girl, Saturday. When I read the paper today, I knew it was her.”