The Guilty hp-2 Page 16

  Agnes entered the building, led me to her office. She unlocked the door and flipped the light switch, the lava lamp glowing a festive red and green and casting a Christmas-y glow over her replica firearms. "Did you have any luck with the information on the Winchester?" she asked.

  "You have no idea," I said. I told her about New Mexico, about the stolen Winchester, and the connection to Billy the Kid.

  When I finished Agnes sat back and twiddled her lip with her thumbs.

  "William H. Bonney," she said, "is one of the most misunderstood figures not only to come from the lawlessness of the Old West, but in all of history."

  "How so?"

  "For the most part, Billy the Kid has been portrayed as one of the most brutal men to ever raise a rifle. It's true Bonney killed over twenty men and almost single-handedly changed this country to the United States of Anarchy. But…" She trailed off.

  "But what?"

  "But as you may not know, Bonney wasn't always evil. He was a petty thief who actually wanted to do good."

  "The Regulators," I said.

  "That's right. See, Billy was the very first inspiration for tabloid journalism."

  "Yellow journalism," I said, remembering my conversation with Jack.

  "That's right. And let me tell you, some of the crock those papers churned out would put the Weekly World News to shame.

  Every inch Billy took, they credited him with a yard. It's true that he was one of the most deadly men to ever hold a Winchester, but it wasn't until his killer, Pat Garrett, published a book about the whole ordeal that the legend took off. Fact is,

  Bonney was only confirmed to have killed nine men. The others were killed in larger gunfights. Most were likely killed by other members of the Regulators, but guess who got credit.

  Most of his closest friends thought the Kid was pretty easygoing, even funny, but dime store novelists knew funny didn't sell a villain. Dangerous, cold-blooded and hair-triggered did.

  "You look at the legend of Billy the Kid now," she continued, "almost a hundred and thirty years after his death, and the man has become a folk hero."

  "Does the name Brushy Bill mean anything to you?"

  Agnes eyed me suspiciously. "Where did you hear that?"

  "In Fort Sumner. A museum curator mentioned it."

  "Never mind Brushy Bill Roberts. That's one myth grown from diseased roots."

  "If it's all the same, Professor Trimble, I'd like the opportunity to check every tree and then decide if I'm barking up the wrong one."

  She sighed. "It really is just a waste of time."

  "Tell that to the four dead people."

  Agnes sighed. "If you insist. Brushy Bill Roberts," she continued, "was a charlatan in the 1950s who claimed to be

  Billy the Kid."

  "Wasn't the Kid shot and killed in 1881?"

  "Yes," Agnes said. "But like Elvis, Tupac Shakur and the

  Loch Ness monster, some people simply love conspiracy theories and won't give them a rest despite all the evidence proving their insane delusions are complete bunk."

  "I love bunk," I said. "Explain the bunk."

  "In 1949, a probate officer investigated the claim of a man named Joe Hines. While interviewing him, the officer learned that Hines had been involved in the Lincoln County wars.

  Hines claimed to have known Billy the Kid. He said Pat

  Garrett never shot the Kid, and that Bonney was actually alive and well and living in Hamilton, Texas, under the name of Ollie P. 'Brushy Bill' Roberts. Out of curiosity, the officer went down to Hamilton and found Roberts. After being confronted with the witness, Roberts confessed to being the Kid.

  Roberts then fought to reclaim his 'lost' identity, saying he wished to die with the pardon Texas Governor Lew Wallace had reneged on over eighty years ago."

  Agnes stopped.

  "And?" I said.

  "And Brushy Bill Roberts was quickly discredited and died the next year. End of story."

  "Wow," I said. "That's a pretty abrupt ending."

  "I don't deal in charlatans, Mr. Parker. They're not a legitimate part of history and aren't worth wasting my time or yours with. Brushy Bill is worth no more consideration than the boogeyman or Freddy Krueger. Now will there be anything else, Mr. Parker? I haven't even touched my scone yet."

  I leaned forward, put on my most soothing voice. Which, considering my girlfriend had just left me on the side of the street, was probably as soothing as sandpaper on dry skin.

  "Let's just say," I said, "that I wanted to know more about

  Brushy Bill for entertainment's sake. You know, so I could win my next game of Trivial Pursuit."

  She let out an audible sigh. Her eyes showed tremendous skepticism. Then they softened. She reached into her desk and pulled out a battered leather address book. She flipped through it, paused at a name, then scribbled something on a

  Post-it note which she then handed to me. Written on the note was the name Professor Largo Vance, retired. A phone number with a 212 area code was written next to it.

  "Professor Vance lives in the city," Agnes said. "He was previously professor emeritus at Columbia, but was expelled due to scandal."

  "What kind of scandal?" I asked.

  "Of the grave-robbing kind."

  "Oh. That kind of scandal."

  "If you want to chase ghosts and waste time, do yourself a favor and speak to Vance, he's a master of both. And I hope for your sake you're not allergic to cats."

  "Not that I know of," I said, standing up. I offered my hand.

  Agnes took it reluctantly. "Thanks for your help. Hopefully this will all lead to something."

  "Piece of advice, Henry. If you go chasing false light, you'll end up in darkness. Don't bother."

  I gave a courteous nod and left her office.

  I wanted to stop at home and change, then call Professor

  Vance and meet with him as soon as possible. If there was any more to this story, I wanted to alert Wallace and Jack and hopefully make tomorrow's national edition.

  I hailed a cab and headed home, plunging my head into the leather seat rest. I took a deep breath and could feel my body swimming away. The more I pulled on this thread the more spool there seemed to be. There had to be a core, some place where the full story was revealed. There was an emptiness. I was so used to calling Amanda, to actively ignore her was torture. I thought about what Jack said in the bar that day. For one terrifying moment, I wondered if what happened yesterday was fated to happen at some point. If people like Jack and

  I were meant to be alone. If loneliness would inevitably hunt us down.

  I was still thinking about this when I paid the cabdriver and trudged upstairs. I unlocked the door, flicked on the light switch, half hoping (and possibly expecting) to see Amanda waiting for me. I checked my phone again just in case. I hadn't missed anything. The emptiness was overwhelming.

  I tossed my bag down and went into the kitchen. My stomach growled for food. I poured a drink of cranberry juice and seltzer, set the glass down on the counter and reached into my pocket for Largo Vance's phone number. And that's when

  I felt a massive blow to the side of my head and everything went black.

  31

  Amanda Davies sat in the high-back leather chair and stared out the window. She wanted to call Henry, desperately wanted to hear his voice if only for a moment. Several times over the last few hours she'd reached for the phone, felt the plastic beneath her fingers, only to retract like she'd touched a poisonous plant.

  The office was empty, dark except for a desk lamp and her computer screen. The minutes seemed to stretch into hours.

  She watched the phone. He'd called once. She waited to see if he would call again. He didn't.

  She'd told Henry she was coming here to sleep. She knew sleep wouldn't come easy. Not last night and not tonight. Not after what she saw.

  Since joining the Legal Aid Society, Amanda had witnessed some horrible things. Mothers and fathers who beat their child
ren within an inch of their life, starved them. Made seven-year-olds wear diapers for days and weeks on end.

  Boys and girls who were found caked in their own excrement while their parents were out drinking, stealing or fornicating.

  And no matter how hard they worked, how many children they rescued, it was like putting a Band-Aid on a busted dam.

  There wasn't enough manpower, not enough funding. As long as society remained this screwed up, as long as there were hedonistic parents who put themselves over their child, there would always be children without homes. Just like her. Until she met Henry.

  She thought about Mya Loverne. Hated the fact that she felt even a whisper of sympathy for the girl. But she did. It was tearing her apart, because she could still see Mya's arms wrapped around Henry's waist, their lips touching, Henry seeming to give in.

  He should have ended it months ago. He should have severed all ties with Mya Loverne. But he hadn't, and last night showed why. He wasn't ready to give her up. Amanda lost the one person she could turn to, the one who showed her that there were relationships beyond her diaries.

  She couldn't take it anymore. She grabbed the phone, nearly spilling a cup of water all over the desk, and dialed

  Henry's cell phone. She waited as it rang, hoping that any second he would pick up and she would hear his voice, hoping there was more to the story. Henry was not a bad guy, like so many of the douche bags and deadbeats desperate women seemed to flock to. Guys who smelled like skunk residue and wore enough hair gel to paste King Kong to the

  Empire State Building. Henry wasn't like them. She couldn't picture him cheating on her. Being with another woman.

  Pressing his lips

  (stop it)

  Henry's voice mail picked up.

  "This is Henry. Leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible."

  She bit her lip, then spoke.

  "Henry, it's me. We need to talk. Call me when you get this."

  For a moment, fear gripped Amanda. What if he was with

  Mya? Couldn't be. He wasn't like that. He wasn't…

  She hung up. Looked out the window again as the sun began to dip below the clouds, casting a golden hue over New York

  City. In a city of millions, Amanda had never felt so alone.

  32

  Wake up, Parker.

  I heard a voice in the distance, like a dream beginning to fade into the reality of morning. There was a beeping noise, like an alarm clock. Then just as abruptly it stopped. A gush of water hit me in the face, and the dream was shattered. I spit it out, coughed it out of my nose. My eyes opened. When I realized where I was, I wished I was still dreaming.

  I was on the floor. Sitting up against the radiator. My hands were strapped behind my back. I couldn't see what was holding them together. My head throbbed and my neck felt sticky. My legs were numb, the tingling sensation of poor circulation. I had no idea how long I'd been here, but every muscle in my body felt some measure of pain.

  The room was dark, a faint amber glow dying on the carpet. The sun was going down. How long had I been out?

  My heart beat fast, fear and adrenaline spreading quickly, my pulse racing as panic began to set in. Water dripped down my face. It got into my eyes and I tried to blink it away.

  Then I heard a sucking sound, looked over and saw a man

  I'd never seen before sitting at the living room table, smoking a cigarette like he didn't have a care in the world. He was

  flicking ashes into a neat little pile on the floor. There was an empty glass in front of him, water beading down its sides. I recognized it as a piece Amanda bought from a mail order catalog a few months back. She'd said my glassware looked so worn it was ready to turn back into sand.

  The stranger cocked his head and smiled at me, like he'd just noticed I was there.

  "You're a heavy sleeper, Parker. I thought I'd have to bring a marching band in here to get those eyes open."

  I blinked the spots from my eyes. The man in my living room was young. Mid-twenties. His face had no lines from age, but looked slightly weather-beaten, like he'd grown up in the sun and hadn't yet learned the dangers of UV rays. He was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. A blue bandanna was wrapped around his head. His eyebrows and sideburns were dirty blond, but the bandanna hid his hair's length and style.

  He wasn't from the city. Nobody got natural tans living here.

  Immediately I knew this man, like me, had come to New York from far away. He'd come for a reason. He'd killed four people without mercy or remorse. And now he was in my home.

  The skin around his face was taut but smooth, like an older man squeezed into a younger man's body. His hands were veiny and strong, his expression one of both deep thought and intense malice, like he'd take a long hard thought before slitting your throat. This was the man who had ended four lives.

  Mixed with fear, I felt a strange dose of excitement. The man sitting in my living room presented a fascinating story, one that I'd been dying to uncover. A spool that unraveled here-leaving me beaten and vulnerable, at a murderer's mercy.

  He peered at me through a smoky haze as he took another drag and exhaled. I couldn't see any weapons on him, didn't know what he'd hit me with, only that it was heavy and knocked me out with one blow. I had a burning urge to write a very strongly worded letter to the landlord about the shitty security in this apartment building, but there were more pressing issues.

  "How did you…" I said. My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton, my words slurred and slow.

  "Please," he said. "Your building is easier to get into than my jeans. And it costs a whole lot less, too."

  He stood up. Moved closer until he was hovering over me.

  My heart was pounding. I tried futilely to struggle with my bonds. I could smell the stink of sweat. He was breathing hard, but not enough to keep a sick smile from spreading over his face.

  "Part of me just wants to kill you right now," he said.

  "Lord knows you deserve it."

  "Like Athena deserved it," I spat. "And Joe Mauser, and

  Jeffrey Lourdes and David Loverne."

  "Damn straight," he said. "Fact is, you belong right in with the whole lot of 'em. I could fucking kill you right now and nobody would know until some shitty two-line statement in your newspaper told 'em."

  I had nothing to say. I tugged against my bonds, felt pain in my shoulder. It was useless. My legs were asleep, and I had no leverage. The boy watched me with odd fascination, like watching a fly struggle to free itself from a web.

  Finally I stopped struggling.

  "If you wanted to kill me-" I started to say.

  "I would have done it right after I knocked your ass out," he finished. "No, I don't aim to kill you just yet, Henry.

  You've been useful so far. I'm sure you were flattered I left one of your writings behind."

  "You're demented."

  He eyed me with disappointment. "Killing you is still a possibility, you don't get a lot smarter."

  "Smarter?" I said, rather stupidly.

  "I've read your paper," he said. "I've read all those stories about the guns and the bullets and the blah blah blah. Fact is your stories don't mean anything. What are you doing, son, other than just repeating shit that's already happened?

  You're a goddamn stenographer with a fancy business card, my friend, and just because you happened to look under a log nobody else wanted to get dirty enough to look under doesn't make you any less of a maggot than the dirt you find underneath."

  "Like you," I said. "The maggot I found underneath."

  "Maggot, whatever. All depends on your perspective," he said, dropping his cigarette onto the floor where he stubbed it out with the toe of his sneaker. "Funny thing about maggots is, people hate 'em, but the whole world would go to hell without 'em. Maggots strip dead flesh from bone, make sure the smell doesn't bother your pretty nostrils."

  "Billy the Kid," I said, tasting my own blood. "What do you…"

&n
bsp; "Shut the fuck up," the boy said. Without warning, he stomped on my leg hard with his foot. I let out a cry of pain.

  "You don't know anything. You know what you do, Henry

  Parker? You write about history. Me?" he said with a sharp laugh. "I am history. I decide what makes tomorrow's headlines. Without me you'd have nothing to write about Athena

  Paradis, her shitty singing, and David Loverne screwing some whore instead of his wife. Without me Jeffrey Lourdes would have nothing to write about except no-talent hacks getting high and crashing their cars. Fact is, guys like you need a guy like me to survive in this world. You reap what I sow. Nothing you can do to change that."

  "So why are you here?" I said, the words spilling out of my mouth. "You say I can't live without you, but I didn't break into your home and whack you over the head."

  He laughed, one time, sharply.

  "See my problem is, ungrateful asshole like you doesn't even know I'm doing you a favor. You might not be able to see it past your six-dollar coffee cup, but Athena Paradis,

  Lourdes, those people are ruining this place. You take the spotlight off of them you find what really matters. You talk about maggots? They're the vermin. Guys like you put a spotlight on the vermin, pretend you can't see how diseased they are. Then they infect you and everyone else. And what do you do? Blame people like me. And since you, Parker, are too chicken-shit to do it yourself, I'm going to do it for you. At some point there won't be no Athenas left. No more maggots to celebrate. And then you'll thank me."

  "So why are you here, exactly? You have some grudge against the world? You didn't get laid until you were eighteen 'cause the girls didn't like some freak with a chip on his shoulder?"

  He looked at me, as though confused and saddened by my ignorance. "You're even dimmer than I thought. Maybe I would be doing folks a favor 'n' get rid of you."

  "Then go ahead, get rid of me or get the fuck out of here."

  "Trust me, I have something better in mind." His mouth curved into a vicious smile that made my skin crawl. "The real reason I'm here is because there's some history best stayed buried. I've seen you going to talk to all those people.