All the Dead Lie Down Read online

  “Oh, dear. One of the campers probably.”

  “Campers?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve had a problem with them. You know, vagrants, homeless people.”

  “Vagrants under the deck!” Toe-tapper bellows.

  “I thought we’d taken care of it, sir. There was this old bag lady used to sleep there. But we ran her off months ago.”

  “What did she look like, this bag lady?” Billy Goat asks.

  “Look like? I don’t know, just an old bag lady. But she always wore this crazy coat with black and white spots.”

  “It was her,” Billy Goat says. “I saw that coat when she was running off.”

  There is a scurry of rapid footsteps and angry words at the door. Then the door slams.

  Sarah Jane waits, rocked by her out-of-control heartbeat. When she’s sure they’re gone, she grabs her bag and crawls out from under the deck. Crouching, she glances around frantically. She shivers and her legs wobble as she stands. When she decides the coast is clear, she slings her big bag over her shoulder and makes a run for it. She heads up toward the road, the opposite direction from the one Tin Can has taken and away from the parking lot where the men are probably heading.

  She trots without looking back at the deck where she’s slept for the past year. It’s the closest thing to a home she’s had. But she doesn’t look back. It never pays to look in that goddamned rearview mirror.

  It’s not until she gets to the Sally, sweating and breathless, still shaking, that she wonders about Tin Can. But she is sure the little twit got away so she’s not going to worry about it. And then she spots Lufkin leaning against the brick wall smoking, and he has a brown paper sack tucked under his arm. The shape and size sure do look like a quart bottle of Thunder Chicken. Oh, boy! Her heart quickens. For climbing back onto that flying carpet, there’s nothing in all the world so helpful as a bottle of Chicken. She smiles at him and waves. He beckons her to come and she crosses the street.

  A few minutes later she catches sight of Tin Can climbing the steps to the Sally. She is panting and clutching Silky in her arms, the long spotted coat flapping around her feet. Sarah Jane doesn’t call out to her; if she did, Lufkin might decide to share his bottle three ways instead of keeping it just for the two of them.

  She will talk to Tin Can tomorrow, and she’ll figure out how to get her coat back then. It shouldn’t be too hard to outwit a half-wit.

  DAME TROT AND HER CAT

  LED A PEACEABLE LIFE,

  WHEN THEY WERE NOT TROUBLED

  WITH OTHER FOLKS’ STRIFE.

  —MOTHER GOOSE

  The photograph sucked Molly’s breath away.

  Emily Bickerstaff, who was called Tin Can on the street, was sitting on the sidewalk next to a bulky plastic garbage bag. The calico cat was draped across her lap, and she was looking down at it with utter adoration, as if it were the dearest, funniest creature in the world. Her mouth was collapsing inward where the front teeth were missing, and her long stringy hair, stiff with dirt, was standing out from her head. Behind her, the sun had caught some wayward gray strands and gilded them.

  Molly said, “Oh, Henry, it’s a pietà. No one could look at this without being snagged in the heart. My God, how do you do it?”

  He shrugged his meaty shoulders. “Dunno. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got at first.” He pointed at the glowing aura made by the gilded strands of hair. “When that halo appeared in the developer, it was like some fucking Shroud of Turin vision.”

  Molly gave it a long last look and then flipped through the rest of the black and white proofs, setting aside the ones she liked best. There were six different photos of each of the five women she’d talked with, and all of them were outstanding. “This one of Roxie shows how luminous her eyes are and this one of Arlene and the Dumpster is extraordinary.”

  She looked up at Henry Iglesias sitting on the corner of her desk, idly picking his teeth with a dirty fingernail, and marveled at the unlikely forms artistic genius took. “Let me go with you next round,” she said. “I want to watch.”

  The photographer shrugged. His face remained impassive, though very little face was actually visible. His thick kinky black hair grew down low on his forehead and his jetblack beard seemed to cover much more of his face than beards usually covered. He wore a gold ring through one nostril and a diamond stud in his left ear. “You’d be a pain in the ass,” he said.

  “No, I wouldn’t. I’m just interested in seeing how you work.” She spread her favorites out on the desk top. “They’re fabulous. It looks like you know these women so well. You must talk with them a lot before you shoot.”

  “Talk to them? Those smelly old bums! No way.” As he smiled, Henry’s broad nose spread out across his face and his nose ring jiggled. Molly was fascinated. She’d been an enthusiastic fan ever since she first saw his work—an exhibit of black and white photographs of barrio teenagers in San Antonio. She frequently requested that he do the photos for her stories but rarely got him. He was very expensive and didn’t seem eager for the work. He was also difficult to work with because, so far as Molly had been able to determine, he was preverbal and didn’t tolerate much guidance about the assignment. But these photos he’d taken of her bag ladies far exceeded her expectations, which was amazing since her expectations were unreasonably high.

  “Tell me this,” she said. “This one with Tin Can—did you pose her like that or did she just happen to sit that way with the cat and the bag and the sun behind her?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t remember.” He stood up and hooked his thumbs in his black suspenders. “When can I get my check?”

  Molly’s phone rang. It was Andrea from the reception desk. “Molly, there’s a Frank Quinlan to see you.”

  “Frank Quinlan!”

  “He says he’s sorry he didn’t call first, but he was in the area and wants just a few minutes of your time.”

  “Frank Quinlan?”

  “Right. We’ve already done this, Molly. Can you see him?”

  “Hold on.” She glanced at Henry. “Are we finished?”

  He shrugged. “My check.”

  “Oh, yeah. Why don’t you stop and ask Ron about it.” Into the phone she said, “Okay. I’m just finishing up here with Henry. Send Mr. Quinlan back.”

  She hung up and looked down at the photographs. “Let me keep these for a few days, Henry. So I can discuss them with Richard—all of them.”

  He shrugged. “Okay by me.”

  Molly walked him to the door and stood watching as he passed Frank Quinlan in the hall. She wondered how Henry would do if she sent him out to Lakeway to photograph retired millionaires on the golf course. He’d probably come back with character studies that made you look at millionaires in a whole new way.

  Frank Quinlan was dressed for business today in a dark suit and tie. His white hair was carefully groomed, swept straight back from his tanned face. He carried a battered leather briefcase, which he set down next to a chair. He held his hand out to Molly. “I hate to disturb you at work, but I do need a few minutes of your time.”

  She shook his hand, trying to hide the reluctance she felt in touching him. “It’s amazing you caught me here. I only come in about once a week.” The really amazing thing, she thought, was that here she was shaking hands with a Quinlan and making small talk.

  “You work at home then.” He looked around her office, which was small and square without a single personal item or hint of décor in it.

  “Yeah. Usually. Uh, have a seat?”

  “Thanks.” He lowered himself into the straight-backed chair and crossed his legs. Then he put his hands on his knees and stared down at them. It looked as if he were saying a silent prayer before doing something he was afraid he might regret later.

  If her life depended on it, Molly thought, she could not come up with a theory about what had brought this man here. But every nerve in her body was tingling, telling her it was going to be something of great interest. She sat down a
cross from him and waited.

  When he finally looked up, his mouth was set firmly. “My father,” he said, shaking his head. “My father is most likely stringing barbed wire in hell right now. Jasper Quinlan was a complete sumbitch.”

  “I know,” Molly said.

  “When we six kids were coming up he bullied us in the worst way. He treated my mother shamefully. He was ruthless in business. More than ruthless—Jasper did some shady things, and some downright illegal things. I’m sorry to have to say that, but it isn’t news to you, is it?”

  Molly held her breath. She had no idea where he was going, but she wanted him to hurry up and get there.

  “Jasper started as a roughneck in the West Texas oil fields and he never did get gentled. I’m sorry about two things. I never beat the shit out of him for the way he treated my mother, and I didn’t stand up to him sooner about some of his … business practices.” He looked up at Molly for a reaction.

  She made a cooing noise in her throat—the noise that she had found over the course of hundreds of interviews to be the best way to keep people talking.

  “He tried to bribe your father not to publish that article on Quinlan’s role in the white oil business. You know that.” He uncrossed his legs and shifted in the chair, trying to get comfortable. “I want to say here, Molly—right up front—that I knew about that—the attempted bribe, I mean. I also knew the article was essentially correct, that Jasper had been running that oil scam in his panhandle fields. He’d been passing off his natural gas as crude oil and getting the wells classified as oil producers.”

  “That way he could get more wells in his fields.”

  “Lord, yes. It was wildly profitable and he was way ahead of his time, before any of the bigger companies were doing it. I didn’t approve, and told the old man so, but I didn’t have the guts at the time to oppose him beyond just protesting.” He looked down at the rug. “When Jasper got wind of Vernon’s poking around, he was furious. And he was afraid. Of prosecution and losing his profits. He went to see your father and offered him far more than he would ever make selling that article to forget about it. Your father refused. He said he’d include the bribery attempt in the article.”

  “I know,” Molly said.

  “I know you do. But I’m about to get to the part you don’t know.” He lowered his voice. “The old man was mean enough to suck eggs and cunning enough to hide the shells. I’m not trying to tell you otherwise. He was a bully, an adulterer, and a swindler. I can see why you suspected him. He had a strong motive here, but”—he looked up at Molly and spoke very deliberately—“he did not kill your daddy. He did not hire anyone to kill your daddy. He did not steal any papers belonging to your daddy. And no one else in my family did either.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I was the comptroller of the company then. I was involved in everything that happened. I would have known.”

  “I’m not convinced.”

  “Let me finish. Remember when you came to Lubbock and did that interview with the Morning Clarion where you accused Quinlan Oil and Jasper Quinlan in particular of killing your father to avoid having their illegal drilling practices exposed?”

  “Nineteen seventy-five, September,” Molly said. “I remember it well.”

  “I’ve never seen the old man so mad as when that reporter came to ask him about it. He was spitting nails.”

  “I know. I met with him and your brother Roger. I thought Jasper was going to have a stroke while I was in his office.”

  “What you don’t know is that, when you left, they hired a private detective to investigate Vernon’s death.”

  Molly stopped breathing. “They did?”

  He nodded. “We did. I was in on it. The idea was to find out what did happen to your father. To prove Quinlan Oil wasn’t involved. And, Molly, we hired a reputable firm to do it. The best. If any one of us had been responsible for his death, we wouldn’t have done that.”

  Molly’s phone rang. Without taking her eyes off Frank Quinlan, she reached over and switched it off. “You hired a private investigator?”

  “That same day you were there. I wrote the retainer check myself.”

  “Who did you hire?”

  “A retired FBI man who ran his own agency. His name was Julian K. Palmer of Palmer Investigations in Lubbock.”

  “Was?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He died about ten years ago.”

  “What did Julian K. Palmer find out?”

  “Well, now. It’s been twenty-five years and my memory is not what it once was.”

  “Yes, but you—”

  Quinlan raised a hand to stop her. “I figured you might want to know this. If you do, you should get it as accurately as possible. From the horse’s mouth.”

  Her heart pounded. “You mean—”

  “I talked with Shelby Palmer in Lubbock yesterday. He runs his father’s firm now. They’ve still got the original case file.”

  “They kept it all this time.” She heard the reverence in her voice.

  “I’ve just faxed him an authorization to release that file to you—if you want to go to Lubbock and take a look at it. They won’t let their files leave the office, but he’ll let you read it there, and he’ll help you decipher it.” He sat back in the chair. “If you want to.”

  “If I want to,” Molly said. It was like questioning whether she wanted to continue some involuntary function like breathing or digesting. There were some things that took no deciding.

  “There are reasons you might not want to.”

  “What reasons?”

  “Well, when you hire a private investigator, you want them to find all the dirt.”

  A ripple of apprehension passed through her. “So?”

  “They didn’t just investigate your daddy. They investigated you too.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. There’s things in that report you won’t like one little bit. If you choose to look at it, it will be painful. Part of the plan was to discredit you so your accusations wouldn’t carry any weight.”

  “I see,” she said grimly. “Should be interesting reading.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. That I was part of that.”

  “What did Julian K. Palmer find out about my daddy’s death?”

  “I’d rather you went right to the—”

  “The horse’s mouth, I know. But just give me the gist of it, as you remember it.”

  “Well, what my father wanted Palmer to come up with was a clear case of suicide. An unbalanced and depressed man shoots himself and his unhinged daughter undertakes a wrongheaded vendetta.”

  “And did he come up with suicide?”

  “Yes, he did. Vernon Cates was depressed, having women problems, money problems. The ME called it suicide. It was all consistent with suicide. But—” He paused, looking down at his hands again.

  “But?”

  “But Mr. Palmer didn’t drop it there. He turned out to be too thorough. Too honest.”

  “What did he find?”

  “Molly, you need to read the report.”

  “But what—”

  “You’ll find some indication that the police work was deficient.”

  “Olin Crocker.” Molly surprised herself with the amount of bitterness she managed to squeeze into those four syllables. “He did no police work.”

  “If I’m remembering rightly, you might find some suggestion to that effect in the report.”

  Molly felt a hot buzzing in her ears. She’d never been able to find a shred of proof, or get anyone else to believe it, but she knew right down to her toenails that Crocker was called off the case by someone.

  “Now don’t get to thinking this report will give you any definitive answers, because it won’t. But it might help some.” Quinlan seemed to be studying her face and what he saw there caused his brow to furrow. “I sure hope I’m doing the right thing here, Molly. I hope to hell it’s going to be helpful to you.”

&nbs
p; “Is that why you’re doing this—to be helpful?”

  “Yes, but it’s more complicated than that.”

  “You feel guilty.”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t you? After you were out at the house, Franny said you were still agonizing over what really happened to your daddy. After all this time. I thought this might help you bring it to some conclusion. But Franny’s afraid this will just add to your pain, give you false hopes.”

  “But you don’t agree?”

  He was slow in answering. “If this were information about Willie, I would want to have it. Even if it was twenty-eight years late in coming.”

  “Me too.”

  “That’s the best I can do in explaining myself. You’re going to Lubbock?”

  Molly looked at her watch. “I wonder how late the Palmer agency is open today.”

  He smiled. “Shelby’s in Houston today. He’ll be back in Lubbock tomorrow. But you can call his office to set up an appointment.” He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a long envelope. “Here’s a copy of the fax I sent him. And a letter introducing you. And the address and phone number of the agency.”

  She took the envelope from him and set it on her desk.

  He stood and held out his hand. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about my role in this. I’m truly ashamed.”

  Molly took his hand, and this time she wanted to. She held on to it. “Thank you. This must have been hard to do.”

  He picked up his briefcase. “It surely was.”

  As he turned to leave, she said, “Frank, I’m so sorry about your son.”

  He paused for a few seconds, then turned back to face her. His eyes had teared up. “Oh, me too. Me too. Everybody says it’ll get easier, but it doesn’t seem to.” He tried to smile. “Let me hear how this goes. And please keep in touch with Franny.”

  “I will.”

  When he’d gone, Molly sat at her desk and opened the envelope. She stared down at the Lubbock phone number of Palmer Investigations. For years she’d had a recurring dream in which her father had sent her a message to call him. She would rush to a phone and try to dial the number—always on an old black wall phone like the one they’d had in Lubbock—but something always interfered: her finger would slip out of the holes in the dial, or some of the numbers on the dial would be missing, or she would forget the number she was trying to call halfway through. Frantically she’d try—again and again—to make the call. But she could never complete it. Each time it turned into a feverish nightmare of frustration.