“These sons of bitches don’t need much reason to kill each other.” He coughed and took a small bottle wrapped in a paper bag from his coat pocket and drank from it. He seemed to take strength or comfort from it. “This here is codeine. We used to call it GI gin. It clears the pipes.”

“What do you want from us, sir?”

“I’ve got people on my back. Clint Harrelson got blown into his swimming pool in the richest section of River Oaks. The neighbors are not happy with the notion that his killer might be living close by.”

“What does that have to do with us?” I said.

“Maybe everything, maybe nothing. The truth is, I’m not sure who you are, son. I talked to your family physician.”

“Our family physician? He’s a quack who sent my mother to electroshock.”

“He says you have a memory disorder just like you told me, except more serious. He says it’s like an alcoholic blackout without the alcohol, which means the person having the blackout can do a lot more damage than a drunk person can.

Does that seem a fair assessment of your spells?”

“You think I shot Mr. Harrelson?”

“It seems your whole family has shot somebody. I got to have a talk with Miss Valerie, too.”

He dropped his cigarette and covered it on the ground with his shoe. Through the entranceway, I could see the sawdust on the Coliseum floor and the animals in their pens and the lights burning overhead. I wanted to be among them, in the smell of wood chips and dung and ammonia and animal feed in the bins. “Sir, I can’t begin to fathom your reasoning. People like Vick and Jaime Atlas and Grady and his friends are on the street, and you’re questioning Valerie?”

“Grady Harrelson says he was sailboating down by Kemah the night his father was killed. Valerie’s neighbors say Grady was at her house that evening.”

I felt the air go out of my chest. “Maybe they got their dates mixed up.”

“No, they’re aware who Grady is and who his father was. They have no doubt about the date.”

“That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Because Valerie didn’t tell you Grady was at her house?”

I couldn’t look at him. “Maybe she wasn’t home. Maybe Grady came by and left.”

“No, she was home that night,” he said. “All the lights were on. Three neighbors gave the same account.”

I saw Valerie coming through the crowd in her cotton skirt and tennis shoes and denim shirt sewn with cactus flowers. I stood up, as I was always taught to do when a woman approached me. She was smiling, obviously unsure what Detective Jenks was doing there. He stood up, too, offering the place where he had been sitting. She sat down between us. He told her the same thing he had told me. She gazed at the animals inside the Coliseum, showing no reaction while he talked.

“I don’t remember what happened or who I saw that evening,” she said after he finished.

“You don’t keep track of who comes by your house? The same night your ex-boyfriend’s old man is murdered?”

“I stopped seeing Grady, even though he called regularly.”

“Your neighbors gave us false information?”

“Ask them.”

“I did. That’s why I’m here,” Jenks said. “Don’t try to vex me, Miss Valerie.”

“You’re being victimized by a seventeen-year-old high school student?” she said.

“That’s why I used the word ‘vex.’ You’re an expert at it, missy.”

“Was Grady at Kemah or not?” I asked Jenks. But my heart wasn’t in the question. I believed what Jenks had said. Grady had been at Valerie’s house and she hadn’t told me. I felt a chasm opening under my feet.

Jenks coughed as though he had a wishbone in his throat. He put another cigarette into his mouth. “Sounds like somebody is lying. Who’s lying, Miss Valerie?”

“I don’t have any comment,” she replied, turning up her nose.

Tags: James Lee Burke Holland Family Saga Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net