Cruel Comfort (Evan Buckley Thrillers Book 1) (19 page)

'Did you regret doing it?'

'What is this, some kind of
psychiatric assessment?'

'Sorry, none of my business.'

'Don't worry about it. You know,
it's actually something of a relief to talk about it after all these years.'

Unfortunately they both knew it
wasn't about to end there, with Evan assuming the role of Father Confessor and
absolving Faulkner of his sins. It was about to get a lot worse for Faulkner
and he could see it coming.

'I've really dropped myself in it
haven't I? As far as you're concerned, I've now got a compelling motive for
protecting Carl Hendricks. If he goes down, I go down.'

They were both quiet as the
unavoidable truth of Faulkner's words sank in. The only sound was a comforting,
quiet hum coming from the equipment in the room.

'That's only true if Hendricks was
guilty,' Evan said, surprising himself as he came to Faulkner's defence. 'Why
did he go to prison?'

Faulkner leaned back on the pillows
and looked up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Evan
knew something bad was coming.

'Unlawful sexual intercourse,' he
said quietly, without opening his eyes.

Evan was beyond reacting. He leaned
back and closed his own eyes. 'Girl or boy?'

'Fifteen year old girl. Fifteen
going on twenty-five. Two of them were convicted. Him and a buddy from the
army.' His voice was completely flat and devoid of emotion.

Evan was lost for words. He didn't
know what to say. He wished more than anything that he was somewhere else. And
he wondered if all this would have come out in a small boat in the middle of a
lake, or whether it was just Faulkner’s weakened state.

'He spent two years in prison,'
Faulkner continued, 'before the conviction was overturned on appeal.'

Evan sat up and opened his eyes. ‘That's
something, at least. Why was it overturned?'

'Apparently the original jury was
deadlocked so it can't have been black and white anyway. Then the judge
reminded them about the time and expense involved with the trial and a possible
retrial if they didn't make up their minds, which he shouldn't have done.'

'You mean he basically said
Hurry
up, I've got a dinner date to get to
. I suppose it's just a job to him.'

'Something like that.'

'That means Hendricks got off on a
technicality.'

'I suppose so.'

'What about the other guy?'

'Him too.'

Evan stood up and started to pace
the small room. Faulkner was still lying back with his eyes closed. He was
probably wishing Hendricks had hit him a bit harder.

'What did your wife think about all
this?' Evan said.

'She thought he was set up. That it
was all the other guy's fault - he was seriously unstable, that's for sure.
That her brother never actually did anything and he was framed. Everybody had
it in for him.'

It had the sound of a well worn
argument. Evan could see that he'd been right about it causing more than a few
problems between Faulkner and his wife.

'Is that possible?'

'Anything's possible. If you mean:
do the police routinely fit people up for crimes they didn't commit? No. Do
they make mistakes? All the time.'

'What did you think? Could he have
done it?'

'Of course he
could have
-
for what it's worth I don't think he actually did. He might be the lowest form
of pond life, but he's certainly not stupid.'

'That's handy for your conscience.'

Faulkner tried to give him a hard
stare, but looked a bit too comical with his head bandaged to pull it off.

'Let me ask you something, Mr Holier-than-thou.
What would you be prepared to do to bring back your wife?'

'We're not talking about me here.'

'That's
handy
for you too.'
He picked up the photograph of his wife again and waved it at Evan. ' I didn't
want to lose my wife so I went against my better judgement and did what she
asked me to do. I put my career on the line because I didn't want to make her
life more difficult than it already was.' He dropped the photograph onto the
bed again. 'Something tells me you might bend a few rules to get your own wife
back.'

Evan didn't really have an answer
for him. Faulkner was right and they both knew it. Faulkner wasn't going to
leave it there either.

'The only thing that differentiates
us,' he continued, 'is that I already had to find out if I had the balls to do
it. You - I'm not so sure.'

Evan didn't know how he had allowed
Faulkner to get him on the back foot. On the subject of Sarah too. It was time
he turned the tables again.

'Okay, okay, you did what you had to
do,' he said in his best John Wayne voice. 'Your wife's getting better, you're
learning to live with it, Hendricks is keeping his nose clean...and then Daniel
Clayton happens. That can't have been a good day.'

Faulkner snorted. 'Not for anyone,
it wasn't.'

'I don't suppose you want to share
your initial thoughts when you took that call?'

'Sure I do.’ He smiled. ‘Probably
something along the lines of
I better not do a Buckley here
.'

Evan's bewilderment amused Faulkner.
He smiled again, although it didn't get up anywhere near his eyes.

'It means I better not go off
half-cocked, jumping at the first half-assed conclusion that enters my
preconceived mind.'

Evan could feel his cheeks burning.
'You expect me to believe it never crossed your mind it could have been
Hendricks - and you'd given him the perfect opportunity? You must have been
scared shitless the chickens had finally come home to roost.'

Faulkner shook his head emphatically
and grimaced. 'No. For one, it was a young boy who went missing. That's very
different to Hendricks and his piece of jailbait. A man who goes after a girl
because she looks twenty-five isn't interested in prepubescent schoolboys.'

It sounded to Evan like the kind of
homegrown psychology that Ray Clements had complained about. He was surprised
at Faulkner, who must have come across plenty of degenerates who crossed the
lines during his time on the force.

'Okay, let me put it a different
way...'

'You can put it where the sun don't
shine for all I care.'

'Just hear me out. Let's say you
were looking into all the other potential suspects and one of them just
happened to have a criminal conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse. Would
that have flagged him up; made you treat him any different to the others? Maybe
concentrate your efforts on him.'

'I didn't need to concentrate on
Hendricks any harder. I already knew everything about him.'

'And chose to ignore what you knew.'

'For Christ’s sake, Buckley, you're
impossible. I didn't
ignore
what I knew - I made a judgement call on the
basis of that information. '

'And that was it?'

'No, of course that wasn't it. We
interviewed him along with everyone else. But, like I told you before, he had a
perfect alibi. When the boy disappeared he was driving a bus full of fifty
screaming kids. Then he went to a strip club. To look at women's tits, not
little boys' wieners.'

Evan had to admit he had a point.
Everything he knew about Hendricks suggested he was a low-life pussy hound.
Perhaps he was jumping to conclusions.

'What did your wife think when it
happened?'

'She thought it was going to go
badly for him. She was scared his past would get dug up and then everyone would
jump to conclusions, just like you.' He jabbed his finger in Evan's direction.
'Not to mention the effect it would have on my career and our lives.'

'But still no doubts about her
darling brother? It must have seemed like one thing after another - and it's
never his fault. She didn't see any kind of a pattern there?'

'No. Nor did she see things that
weren't there in the first place.'

Evan was well aware that the comment
was directed against him. 'Better than deliberately not looking at things that
are staring you in the face.'

Faulkner would have thrown something
at him then, if he'd had anything to throw apart from the cheap plastic TV
remote. Instead, he lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes again. His face
relaxed. 'I really don't think we're getting anywhere here. I think I'd like to
get some sleep now.'

Evan agreed. Whatever Faulkner
really thought and felt, he wasn't about to share it with him. He started for
the door and then stopped.

'One more thing.' Faulkner groaned.
'Why did Hendricks attack you?'

'I have no idea. You'll have to ask
him.'

'What was the argument about?'

'Nothing that would make him want to
try to kill me.'

'I suppose I just have to take your
word on that as well?'

'How about I just make something up?
Will that make you go away?'

Evan knew he wasn't going to get
anything else out of Faulkner. He headed for the door again.

'What are you going to do? I hope
you're not going to go over all this again with Hendricks,' Faulkner said.

Evan stopped and turned around.
'What do you care?'

'I don't want to be the cause of any
more trouble as a result of what I've told you.'

Evan was instantly alert. 'What do
you mean any
more
trouble?'

'Okay, that's it. We're finished
here. Send in the nurse on your way out, will you. For some reason my head
hurts twice as bad as when you arrived. Forget I said we were quits.'

Evan took the hint and left. Damn,
he thought as he walked down the corridor, I forgot to ask if it was okay to
borrow his gun.

Evan didn't know what to make of
Faulkner's comment about causing
more
trouble. He couldn't decide if it
had been an innocent slip of the tongue or if Faulkner secretly believed
Hendricks was guilty and felt responsible for everything that had happened.

He certainly had enough to lose.
Back when it happened, he already had thirty years on the job and he'd made it
to the top of the tree. That was a lot to throw away. Against that, he just
didn't seem like the kind of guy who would let a serious crime go unpunished to
save his own skin.

Those were Faulkner's problems. Evan
didn't have any such conflicts of interest. He knew exactly what he wanted to
do and now seemed like the perfect opportunity. With Hendricks lying low, it
was the perfect opportunity to nose around his property. Whatever Faulkner
might think, Evan reckoned it was worth a more thorough look. Any kind of look
would be better than doing nothing like the police.

It was early evening and there were
still a couple of hours of daylight left as he drove out to Hendricks' farm. He
drove straight past it and checked for Hendricks' pickup but the driveway was
empty. It could be hidden round the back of the barns, but that was a chance he
was going to have to take.

He drove on until he came to a
disused farm track about a half mile past Hendricks' place. It led to a five
bar gate which didn’t look like it had been opened in years, so he backed his
car in as far as he could go. He was happy enough it wouldn't be visible from
the road unless someone was specifically looking. There was hardly any traffic
on the road anyway.

He stuffed a pair of thin cotton
gloves into his pocket and felt the reassuring presence of the SIG-Sauer. Then
he headed back down the road towards
Beau Terre
.

Nothing passed him on the road in
the time it took him to get there. There was a small stand of red maple just
before he got to Hendricks' driveway and he made his way towards it. The
daylight was draining slowly out of the sky and he was almost invisible
standing amongst their trunks. He had a good view of the house and barns as
well as most of the yard so he settled in to wait for a while.

After a quarter hour he hadn’t seen
any lights come on or movement in the house. There could be other rooms on the
far side of the house that he couldn't see, but he was getting a strong
impression that the place was empty.

Suddenly a light came on by the
front door. He stiffened and caught his breath, even though he was invisible
form the house. He strained to see if he could make out any movement inside the
house, and then relaxed again as he saw the large white cat lightly descend the
few steps down from the porch and run off into the bushes. It must have been
asleep in the rocker and set off the security light as it headed off for the
evening. After a couple of minutes the light went off again.

He decided he'd given it long enough
and trotted briskly across the yard. He pulled on the gloves and tried the
front door first. It was locked, so he headed round the back. To his amazement
the back door was unlocked. Either Hendricks was especially trusting or he'd
left in such a hurry he forgot to lock up. Or he was sitting inside in the dark
with a shotgun across his knees waiting for unsuspecting intruders.

Evan opened the door carefully and
stepped into the kitchen. No Hendricks and no shotgun. The key was in the lock
on the inside so he locked the door behind him and dropped the key into his
pocket. He wasn’t going to risk anyone creeping up on him. He probably had
about an hour of daylight before it got too dark to see without turning on the
lights.

First of all he wanted to check the
whole house to make sure it really was empty. Everything in the kitchen was
neat and tidy; no dirty dishes in the sink; no trash can overflowing with beer
cans. He crossed the room and made his way slowly down the hallway, checking
each of the rooms as he passed. Two living rooms, a dining room, a study, all
of them empty. If he hadn't seen Hendricks sitting on his porch three days
earlier, he wouldn't have been able to say if anyone had lived there in the
last six months.

There was a door under the stairs
leading down to the cellar. He'd have to turn the light on to see anything down
there, so there wasn't any point wasting any of the daylight doing it now.

He crept up the stairs. His mouth
was dry and he had an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was almost as
bad as kicking down motel doors. Luckily nothing creaked under his weight in
the solid old house. He reached a large landing with four bedrooms and a
bathroom leading off it. He checked the bathroom first and then the two smaller
bedrooms. No sign of life.

That left the master bedroom and
what was probably a guest room. He checked the guest room first, leaving
Hendricks's room until last. Somebody was obviously living in it. The bed was
neatly made with what he thought were called hospital corners, and it had
definitely been slept in. There were a couple of pairs of men's pants, a dark
blue blazer and half a dozen shirts hanging in the closet, all of them clean
and pressed. He looked under the bed and saw two pairs of shoes. He pulled the
nearest pair out. It was a pair of meticulously shined black Oxfords. Looking
down at the gleaming toe caps and the orderly way the clothes were hanging in
the closet, he wondered if the visitor was Hendricks's buddy from the army; the
one he went to prison with. Perhaps he lived here; there was more than enough
space. There was some underwear and T-shirts in the drawers - even the T-shirts
were ironed and folded like they were still on the shelf - and some other stuff
that was of no interest. No porn in the nightstand drawer but no crucifix above
the bed either.

There was a shoe box on the top
shelf in the closet. Evan got in down but it was empty. Something about it
smelled familiar but he couldn't quite place it. Then it came to him: it was
gun oil. He took the SIG-Sauer out of his pocket and sniffed it. It had the
exact same smell. So whoever the gun belonged to was carrying it around with
him.

He moved on to Hendricks's bedroom.
It was the largest; at the front, overlooking the driveway and the road and
then the fields beyond that. The low sun slanted across the crops and Evan
stood at the window admiring the view, thinking how unfair it was that
Hendricks lived in such a lovely house.

The peaceful silence of the evening
was broken by the sound of a car coming down the road. He stepped back from the
window slightly, not that anyone would have been able to see him. The car kept
coming and then, to his horror, he saw it slow down and then swing into
Hendricks's driveway. It was a blue Crown Vic, unmistakably a police car,
unless someone had bought a used one on ebay.
Damn, it must be Guillory.
Where the hell's he been all this time?

He watched it park and saw Guillory
climb out from the driver's side. Then the passenger door swung open and his
fat partner, Ryder, got out. He stretched and hitched up his belt. His gut
wobbled like something just turned out of a Jell-O mold. Evan would have loved
to see his ugly head explode in a cloud of red mist as Hendricks or his buddy
shot him from the rooftops, but it didn't happen.
Maybe another day.

Guillory walked up the steps onto
the porch and disappeared from Evan's view. The security light came on again
and lit up Ryder's face as he looked up at the window. Evan froze and held his
breath, even though there was no way Ryder could see anything with the light in
his eyes. Suddenly Ryder looked back down at his feet. The white cat had come
back and was rubbing itself up against his leg. He half kicked, half pushed it
away and the cat howled and shot off across the yard. Ryder glanced briefly up
at the window again and then headed round the back.

Evan relaxed and let out his breath,
and then almost jumped out of his skin as Guillory hammered on the front door. His
pulse was racing; he felt like a cornered rat. He heard Ryder try the back
door. When it didn't open he shook it violently a couple of times before giving
up. Thank God I decided to lock it from the inside, he thought. He could
probably have talked Guillory round, but Ryder would most likely have shot him
first and asked questions later, before Guillory could stop him. And thank God
he'd parked out of sight half a mile away.

Guillory hammered on the door some
more and then came back down the steps and walked round to join Ryder. Evan
could hear them talking but couldn't make out what they were saying. Luckily
they didn't seem to think the house was worth any more attention and started
walking towards the barns.

They disappeared from sight again
and Evan ran towards the back of the house to get a better view. There was a
faded Persian rug on the polished wood floor of the landing. Generally, it
stayed put when a person walked over it in a normal, sedate manner but when
Evan ran across it, it slipped under him and he crashed into the door frame of
the back bedroom, hitting his damaged ear right on the sharp wooden edge. He
gasped and clamped a hand to his ear, and stumbled forward into the room,
losing his balance and falling flat on his face in front of the window. It
sounded to him like a herd of buffalo had just invaded the house.

He lay on the floor, hardly daring
to breathe. He wanted to peek out the window to see if they had heard anything.
All he could do was wait and see if they came back to the house again. He
couldn't hear them at all, but that might mean they'd drawn their pistols and
were stealthily approaching the house. Evan loved having such a vivid
imagination. And his ear was hurting like hell.

He heard one of them laugh and the
other one joined in. You wouldn't do that if you suspected there was someone
hiding out inside the house, would you? Unless one of them had said he was
going to shoot whoever was in the house in the butt, and the other one laughed
and said no, shoot him in the balls. Police humor. 

Evan thought he could risk taking a
look. He slowly got himself onto his knees, backed away from the window and
straightened up until he could see over the sill. Guillory and Ryder were both
standing in front of the larger barn with their backs to him. They seemed to be
fiddling with the padlock on the doors. Evan moved forward and across to the
side of the window where he could see better. The light was fading fast now so
he didn't really have to worry about being seen.

He saw Ryder pull the padlock free
and open the barn doors. Evan could see Hendricks' pickup inside. Either he
owned another vehicle or his army buddy was driving - or he was holed up
somewhere nearby where he didn't need a car. Guillory found the light switch
and Evan watched them go inside and look around. From inside the house Evan
couldn't see anything else in there but he couldn't see all the way to the back
wall. It didn't seem like there was anything of any interest in there anyway,
because Guillory and Ryder came back out again in under two minutes. Guillory
turned out the light and they closed and padlocked the doors again.

They walked across to the smaller
barn and tried the padlock on that too, but it was clearly more of a challenge
than the other one. They gave up after a couple of minutes. A bit of gentle
persuasion was okay it seemed, but not shooting the lock off. Besides, it's
quite difficult to relock a padlock that you've just shot off. They had a quick
conversation and started back towards their car.

Now, Evan thought, now's the time
for your head to explode with bits of bone and brain matter and blood flying
everywhere. It didn't happen this time either, but Evan enjoyed the mental
picture he had. They didn't even give the house another look as they passed it.
Evan walked carefully back to the front of the house in time to see them get
into their car and drive away.