The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,77

I said.

I realized he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring up the stairway at Valerie. She was wearing jeans and sandals and a tan cowboy shirt with rearing horses sewn on the pockets.

“I’m Detective Merton Jenks,” he said. “I want to get a confirmation of your account and ask you a few questions. It won’t take long, miss.”

“Did you find Vick Atlas?” she said.

“Not yet,” Jenks said.

“Then who is going to believe my story?”

“I’m not sure what your story is. That’s why I’m here.”

We sat in the living room under the ceiling fan, and she went through it again in detail.

“Atlas couldn’t explain how he knew you had run out of gas?” Jenks said.

“That’s right. How did he know those phony cops didn’t pull me over? They had a spotlight on the driver’s side like police cars have.”

“You think Atlas set up the situation?”

“That’s what I’d like to believe.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise they intended to burn me to death.”

“You spat in one guy’s face?”

“The one with the overbite.”

He removed a manila folder from his coat pocket. “I have two sets of mug shots here. Do these men look familiar?”

She took the photos from his hand and looked at them. She pointed at the profile of a man whose upper teeth extended over his lower lip. “This is the one who handcuffed me. I can’t be sure about the other one. His friend called him Seth.”

“That’s Seth Roberts. He was in Huntsville and Raiford in Florida. The guy you spat on, the one with the matches, spent nine years in the Nevada state prison for suffocating his common-law wife. I’m going to show you two more photos. The purpose is not to disturb you or to satisfy any desire for revenge that you might have. The purpose is to make sure the men in the second set of photos are the ones who handcuffed you and poured gasoline inside your car. Maybe your father will object to me showing you these pictures, but that’s the way it is.”

“Please show me the photos, Mr. Jenks,” she said.

“It’s Detective Jenks.”

The photos were eight-by-tens. The two bodies in them were naked and curled up inside a ditch. The hands had been cut off. The gunshot wounds were in the ear, the mouth, and the forehead.

“I recognize the man who handcuffed me,” she said. “I don’t know about the other one.”

“That’s Seth Roberts.”

“Who killed them?” she asked.

“Vick Atlas said he was going to square things for you?” Jenks said.

“He didn’t use those words.”

“But he was going to get even for you?”

“That’s what he said.”

Jenks put the photos away. “How you feeling?”

“Guess,” she replied.

“You’re a brave girl,” he said.

“Do you believe Vick Atlas killed those men?”

“He’s twenty-one years old. He looks forty. His old man is a sociopath. If I had a son like Vick, I’d have my genitalia surgically removed and buried in concrete.” Jenks shook his head and rubbed his palms on his knees. “I don’t know who killed them.”

“What are you not telling us?” I asked.

“Vick Atlas doesn’t decide who dies and who lives. His father gives the orders. If the old man has somebody tagged, it’s about money. This isn’t about money.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I don’t. If I had to guess, I’d say Vick Atlas created a setup where he’d be your savior, Miss Epstein. Then somebody else got involved.”

“Who?” I said.

“Somebody with no conscience at all,” he said. “Have you seen a woman named Cisco Napolitano around recently?”

THAT AFTERNOON I DID something I would not have dared think about a few months before. I called the information officer at the Houston Police Department and told him I was a reporter for the Houston Press doing a feature on several outstanding members of the department.

“He was with the OSS, right?” I said. “That’s something else, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you ought to talk to him about that,” the officer said.

“That’s okay. I have most of what I need. I forgot the number of years he was in law enforcement in California. Or was it Nevada?”

“It was Nevada. Five years, I think. Check with him. What’s your name again?”

“Franklin W. Dixon,” I replied.

“Who?”

I COULD SEE MY mother slipping away by the day, maybe even the hour, convinced that her public humiliation of Mr. Krauser had caused his suicide. The western sky could be strung with evening clouds that looked like flamingo wings; rain might patter on her caladiums and hibiscus and hydrangeas and roses and fill the air with a smell