The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,14
the valve stems wasn’t enough.”
“Loren Nichols says I burned his car?”
He looked at what he had written on the pad. “One step at a time. You did or did not cut his tires?”
“There’s a girl in the Heights I wanted to see. Maybe that’s why I was in the neighborhood. Her name is Valerie Epstein.”
“You were chasing some new puss? That’s why you were in the Heights? It’s coincidence you were seen in proximity to the Ford, owned by guys you admit to having trouble with?”
“You don’t have the right to talk about Miss Valerie like that.”
“Get up.”
“Sir?”
He ripped the chair from under me and threw it against the wall, spilling me on the floor. “You think I came from downtown over a burned car owned by two punks who were in Gatesville? Are you that dumb?”
I pushed myself up, swaying, my knees not locking properly. “You didn’t have the right to say what you said.”
This time I held his stare and my eyes didn’t water. He picked up the chair with one hand and slammed it down in front of the desk. “Sit down.” When I didn’t move, he opened a desk drawer and removed a telephone book. “I’ll take your head off, boy.”
I sat down but never took my eyes off his face, even though I couldn’t stop blinking. He removed a five-by-seven black-and-white photo from his coat pocket and set it on the desk. “You know this girl?”
“No.”
“Look at the girl, not me.”
“I don’t know her.”
There were two images on the same sheet of paper, a side view and a frontal of the same young woman. She was wearing an oversize cotton jumper with gray and white stripes on it. At the bottom of the frontal photo was her prison number. She was hardly out of her teens, if that. Her hair was awry, like thread caught in a comb. Her eyes seemed to well with sadness and despair.
“You never saw her anywhere? You’re sure about that?” he said.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“You didn’t decide to try some Mexican poon?”
“Why are you asking me questions like this?”
“Her name was Wanda Estevan. She was a prostitute in Galveston.”
“Was a prostitute?”
“Somebody broke her neck. Maybe she was thrown from a car. Or maybe somebody broke her neck in the car, then bounced her in the street. About two blocks from where the Ford was torched.”
“What does her death have to do with the car?”
“There was gasoline and detergent on her jeans. The same combination that was used to burn the car. Quite a puzzle, don’t you think? You have gasoline cans at your filling station?”
“Sure. For people who run out.”
“How about in your garage?”
“No, sir.”
“Were you out with Saber Bledsoe early this morning?”
“Yes, sir, he picked me up in the Heights and drove me home.”
“You said you didn’t know if you were in the Heights or not. Rats must have eaten holes in your memory bank.”
He had me again. He put a Pall Mall in his mouth and scratched a match on the desk, the flame flaring on his cigarette. He took a couple of puffs and removed a piece of tobacco from his lip. “We found a gas can in his garage. The can has soap detergent in it. I’d say your friend has shit on his nose.”
WHEN I GOT HOME, I threw up in the toilet. Then I recovered the stiletto from under my mattress and flicked it open. I saw on one side of the blade, barely visible, a trace of rubber, the kind that might be left from slicing off a valve stem. My father came into the room without knocking. “Want to explain that?”
“This frog sticker?”
“I’d call it a weapon a criminal would have. Where did you get it?”
“In a pawn store.”
His eyes rested on the shelf above my desk where I kept my arrowhead collection and antique fishing lures and minié balls and a rusted revolver that had no cylinder and a cigar box full of Indian-head pennies. He didn’t speak for a long time. “Put it on the shelf. It doesn’t leave the room.”
“Yes, sir.”
“As a rule, when members of our church’s clergy talk about sin, what are they referring to?”
“Sex.”
“That’s correct. They don’t mention much about war, nor about violence in general. But that’s the real enemy, that and greed. Don’t let anybody tell you different. A man who carries a knife like that one is a man who’s afraid.”
When my father spoke this way, he was a different man, more regal and