The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,80
of camellia bushes into the darkness, closing the gate, shaking it to make sure it was snug. At first none of the eyewitnesses could move. Later all of them said they felt time had stopped, that in the aftermath of the shooting, they felt trapped inside a slow-motion film and traumatized by the fate visited on poor Mr. Harrelson. They gathered on a common porch in their bathrobes and drank straight whiskey poured by the owner of the house and shared their bewilderment. By the next day, their lawyers indicated that their clients could not swear to the accuracy of their earlier statements because of the previous night’s inclement weather. They also asked that names not be released to the press and that authorities contact the attorneys if they needed any more information.
In the morning the pool was drained and the tile and concrete scrubbed with lye and the filters cleaned with disinfectant by Mexican workers. Aside from the remains that lay on a slab in the county morgue, all the earthly fluids and chemical signatures of Clint Harrelson were hosed with the pine needles into the sewage system.
THE STORY GOT a banner front-page headline in all three of the city’s newspapers. The Houston Press ran a photo of Grady arriving at the funeral home in dark glasses and a white suit, a black carnation in the lapel, his jaw set, his hands balled at his sides like a New York gangster barely suppressing his sorrow and anger. The cutline referred to him as a former honor student, football quarterback, and marine. Behind him in the photo was Vick Atlas.
The story stated that Grady was sailboating when he received news of his father’s death. After I read the story, I drove to Valerie’s house. I was sure we were all going to be dragged into the investigation. I had become as cynical as Saber about the legal system, and not without reason. As soon as I got to Valerie’s, she told me Merton Jenks had already questioned her father.
“Why?” I said.
“Jenks thinks he might have done it,” she said.
There was a beat when I avoided her eyes. “Your father wouldn’t really do something like that, would he?” I said.
It wasn’t an honest question. I knew better. Mr. Epstein was not one to sneak through life on side streets. I hoped Valerie had an alibi for him. I didn’t want to think of him as a man who could commit murder.
“What is the difference between somebody ‘really’ doing something, as opposed to simply doing it?” she said.
“What people say and what they do aren’t always the same thing,” I replied.
“I know he wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man,” she said.
“That’s it? Armed people are okay?”
“In Yugoslavia he saw the SS hang civilians with wire on the village square while their families were forced to watch.”
Valerie could create images that were like a rubber band snapping inside your head.
“But he was home with you when Mr. Harrelson was killed, right?” I said.
“No, he wasn’t. He was returning from Beaumont. Jenks asked if you were with me when Mr. Harrelson was killed.”
“Why me?”
“He wanted to know if you really had spells.”
Jenks was a master at messing up people’s heads. “So anything you said would indict me? If I didn’t have spells, I was a liar. If I did have them, I could be guilty of anything and everything.”
“Something like that.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That anything you told him was the truth. That he needed to get his fat ass out of my house.”
“You said that to Jenks?”
She smacked her gum and didn’t answer. How much can you love one girl?
JENKS WAS AT my house that afternoon. I knew he was coming, and by this time I knew his mission was no longer about me or my mother and father or Clint Harrelson’s murder or Krauser’s suicide or the death of the Mexican prostitute named Wanda Estevan or Saber’s vandalizing of Krauser’s house or his boosting Grady’s convertible or the torching of Loren Nichols’s customized heap or the terrorizing of Valerie by the two ex-convicts who ended up naked in a ditch with their hands stubbed off at the wrists. Detective Jenks didn’t have an agenda; he was at war on a global scale. He was right out of medieval mythology, the Templar knight who slept in his armor and gave tribute to God while loading the heads of decapitated Saracens into a catapult and flinging them back into their own lines.