Ghost of the Karankawa (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 10) Read online

  His fat seemed to have melted away, and according to reports, there had been quite a bit of it to melt. What was left? Desiccated skin, bones, and ropes of muscle beneath bib overalls and a tee-shirt that was last changed along about the time Clinton was in office.

  Purcell Lee hadn’t an ounce of moisture left in his body.

  *****

  “A mummy, huh?” I asked Evanston. “Sounds...unlikely.”

  “What?” he asked, and laughed. “Of course it’s unlikely. It’s impossible. My sister is hysterical.”

  “Isn’t she a spirit medium, or something like that?”

  “She’s a flim-flam is what she is. Still, I love her. The deal is that if this thing isn’t resolved down there soon, she’s going to leave Anahuac. And that would be bad news.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because. It means that she’ll come here, and I don’t want her within a hundred miles of me.”

  “Oh.”

  “My little sister is expensive,” Evanston Cooper said.

  I’d had my shoes propped up on the corner of my desk. I removed them and let them slap down on the hardwood floor. I reached over and twirled my coffee cup full circle on my desk. I looked at my hands and scratched the callous under my ring finger.

  “Are you going to do it?” Evanston asked.

  I looked up at him. “Am I going to do what?”

  “Go figure out what is going on down there! Shrieks in the night. Mummies. All that bullshit!”

  “It sounds...charming, Evanston. Really. But...”

  “What is your wife’s favorite charity?”

  “Julie? Hmph. Well, she has a soft spot in her heart for the women’s shelter here in town. Mostly she’s too busy being pregnant and raising brats to do much for them. When she can’t physically help out, she’s good at writing checks.”

  I thought about it for a moment. Evanston had cashed in ninety-five percent of his portfolio a few years back, and all he’d left me to manage was the dregs. I wondered what he had done with the rest of it. Maybe he had managed to sandbag his money on his own. Who knew?

  “Okay,” he said. “How would she like to donate ten thousand bucks to them?”

  “You just doubled your amount, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “I did.”

  “That’s not right, Ev. It’s below the belt and hitting a guy where he lives.”

  “Why don’t you call her and find out?”

  *****

  So I called her. Stupid of me.

  “Yes!” Julie said.

  I looked up at Evanston, then spoke softly into the phone. “Wait a minute, honey. You don’t know what these kind of things...uh, entail. Let’s not be too hasty here.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m coming with you. I know exactly what they entail. And you’re not getting out of this one. Ten thousand! To my charity! Tell him now. I want to hear this.”

  I moved the phone away from my face. “Uh. Evanston, Julie says she agrees with you.”

  “I’d say she’s damned excited, Bill. That’s what I’d say.”

  “Shut up, Ev.” I put the phone back in speaking range. “Uh, honey. I think you just made his day.”

  “And you just made mine. When do we leave?”

  “Tell her,” Evanston said, “you can go today. That is, if you’re not too busy.”

  “You can hear her from there?” I asked him.

  “Clear as a bell.”

  “Great.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  My life is complicated. It seems like years since I could jump in a car at a moment’s notice and head off into the blue. After Evanston left I called Julie back and began making arrangements.

  “Jessica says she wants to come along,” Julie said, “but she has patrol duty tonight and can’t get out of it. She’ll be here during the day with the little kids. That leaves tonight. Permission to call Penny?”

  “I’ll handle Penny,” I said.

  “Let’s take Franklin.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, he’s getting old and he needs an adventure. Something to liven him up.”

  “I think he needs a front porch and a bent rocker swaying beside him, with me in the rocker.”

  “Oh shut up. You’re acting as if turning fifty means instantaneous death. The moods you get in these days, I swear.”

  “I am not moody,” I said. “I’m not even morose.”

  “It’s settled then. Franklin goes along.”

  “Fine. We’re taking the Mercedes.”

  “No way. The Expedition.”

  “What concession will you make?”

  “Hmm. Okay, here’s a couple: I won’t demand we stop and get a massage, a manicure, pedicure, or my hair cut.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? That’s everything. All right, we’ll take the Expedition and the dog. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Come get me. Now.”

  I laughed. “You’re enjoying this.”

  “Damned right I am. All the times I had to stay home and worry about you. All the times I had to tell the kids that you were fine, that you would be home soon. Do you realize that for the longest time Jennifer thought we were getting a divorce?”

  “No!”

  “Yes. I’m not sure if Jessica was playing a trick on her or if one of her friends said it in passing, but whenever you didn’t come home she would start crying and say that she didn’t want to have to choose between us.”

  “If it was Jessica,” I said, “I’m taking away that new car of hers. Come to think of it, I don’t think it could be her. She’s nefarious, no doubt. She’s just not…evil.”

  “Exactly. Okay, come on home. I’ll have a few things packed and Franklin ready to go when you get here. When are you coming?”

  “Thirty minutes,” I said.

  *****

  When I pulled up in front of the house, Julie already had the Expedition loaded and Franklin was ensconced at the driver’s wheel. He regarded me coolly. “What took you so long?” his expression seemed to say.

  I nodded to him and started to get in and insist he vacate the front seat, but Julie stopped me in my tracks. “Oh no you don’t, buster. I’m driving the first leg of this trip.”

  “Who says?” I asked.

  “My vote says I’m driving first, and Franklin has graciously decided to swing his vote to my corner.

  “Since when?” I asked. I suppose that I’d thought that Franklin was my dog.

  “Since I feed him, give him treats, take him on walks, and pick up his yard bombs once a week,” she said. She had me there.

  “Ahh,” I nodded and tousled Franklin’s fur. “Wise dog. You know where your bread is buttered.” I looked across at Julie, who busily dropped her purse in the passenger seat and tossed a bag into the back. “You know, I don’t expect much from this trip south. I mean, all I know is someone heard a scream in the night, reports it and nothing is found, then the next day he’s found dead. Probably a heart attack or something.”

  “Mummified?” she asked.

  “Uh…hardening of the arteries, maybe?”

  Julie smirked.

  “Look, I’m not saying I disbelieve anything,” I said. “All I’m saying is—”

  “It’s like you’re from Missouri or something,” she said. “You want to be shown. Well, okay then. Let’s go take a look. But along the way, we’re going to talk about this.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Everything.”

  She closed the door opposite me and came around the car. I passed her along the way and made as if to swat at her, but she jigged to the side and shot me a look.

  I had the feeling then that it was going to be one long trip.

  *****

  Before we were even out of the Austin City Limits, Julie had me going over the story again as Evanston had told it to me. I would rather have talked about anything else.

  “Okay,” she said, “so what screams and screeches in the night? I mean, around little
towns such as Anahuac.”

  “I don’t know. Could be anything. Sometimes domestic cats sound like that when they’re in heat. Kids can scream awfully loud.”

  “Besides those things.”

  “Well. Lessee. There are bobcats. Those woods down there should be full of those. Some owls can really raise a racket. The screech of a damned peahen will curdle your blood.”

  “They have any peahens down that way?”

  “I dunno. I haven’t been down there since I was in college.”

  “Well, I was never in college, but I did stop off there one time on an antique junket.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Yep. I bought an old steamer trunk for Archie Carpin once.”

  “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Maybe it’s the ghost of Archie Carpin down there, looking for his trunk.”

  “Ha! Do you believe in Bigfoot?” she asked me.

  “I—I.”

  “Finally stumped you on something,” Julie said. Her eyes crinkled as she regarded the road and she smiled. It was like she had put one over on me or something.

  “You haven’t stumped me. I just…didn’t expect that one.”

  “You tell Jessica to expect anything and everything.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that. But I also want her to do more than just survive. I want her to flourish and prosper. What’s this about Bigfoot?”

  “Do you believe in him, or not?” she asked.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe in him.”

  “What about UFOs?”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe in them, either.”

  “Okay. Okay. We’ve been married for how long?” she asked.

  “We’ve been living like we were married for longer than we’ve been married. We’ve been married for nine years.”

  “Right. And don’t you think I know you by now?”

  “Ah. Okay, I’ll bite. Where are you going with this line of questioning, Mrs. Prosecutor?”

  “You, Bill. It’s not about what you don’t believe. When you say, ‘It’s not that I don’t believe,’ that’s a line of pure bullshit. The truth of the matter is that you totally believe in everything. You believe in it until it proves itself otherwise. It’s the only thing that explains it.”

  “Um. Explains what?” I asked.

  “Why you married me. Why you trusted me, even after everything I did during the Carpin fiasco.”

  I nodded when I detected her glance in my direction, taking her eyes off the roadway ahead for brief snatches.

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “But there’s one thing you’re leaving out. Actually, it’s the most important thing.”

  “And what might that be, Mr. Defendant?”

  “The fact that I have been madly in love with you from the first instant I saw you.”

  I waited. After a moment I turned to look at her. Julie’s face was flushed red, and reddening by the second.

  A tear slipped down her cheek.

  “That’s not fair,” she whispered, and her voice nearly broke.

  “What’s not fair?” I asked.

  “Let the record show that the Defendant is pulling on the Prosecutor’s heart strings.”

  “That’s really all this Defendant has ever done. I throw myself on the mercy of the Court.”

  Her fingers interlaced with mine.

  “I love you too, honey,” she said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Highway 71 from Austin to Bastrop is about thirty miles. We turned left after the Colorado River and jogged over to Highway 21 and a twelve-mile jaunt over to 290, then to the right towards Houston and points southeast. The afternoon gave way to evening and the sun was still above the treetops. Night falls late in the summer.

  Julie seemed to take it in stride that she was pregnant and almost into her second trimester. She was showing nicely. I had misgivings about her going on this jaunt with me, but there was nothing for it—no talking her out of it and no going back. The last time she and I had an adventure together, she was the one on the run and I was the one helping her out. Sometimes life has a way of turning things upside down.

  We stopped for dinner at a steak place in Giddings, a wonderful little town that sports a burgeoning Arts community, a Weird West Festival that draws the steampunk crowd from all over the Southwest, and I think there’s even a junior college. My steak was perfect, but Julie seemed to hack at hers a little here and there and push it around her plate.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I was thinking about the kids. I mean, what the hell was I thinking running off and leaving them? They need their mother.”

  “I’m sure they do. I can take you back with no problem. You and I go this far for a good steak occasionally. I can just run you back home.”

  She sighed and laid her fork down.

  “But,” I continued, “they’ll be fine. This is our chance. You and me. On the road, on the run. Us against the world. The only thing missing is Hank Sterling and a load of nitrates.”

  “Nitrates?”

  “What we blew up Carpin’s ranch with.”

  “Oh.” Then she laughed. “I always wondered how you did that.”

  “It was Hank who did that. I was just along for the ride.”

  “You saved me, honey,” she said, and then laid her hand over mine. “Maybe some day I’ll have the chance to save you.”

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to,” I said. “Seriously, I have no qualms with taking you home. It’s about seventy miles back. Or, if you’re game, you can help me figure out who turned Purcell Lee into a mummy and what shriek it was he heard in the night.”

  “I’ll just call Jessica and check in. If all is well, we’ll continue on.”

  I smiled. “Fine by me.”

  *****

  After paying for our meal and after Julie’s call home—from which, of course, she gleaned that everything was fine—we got back on the highway south towards Houston. Franklin got our meat scraps, and seemed happy about that. He slept most of the trip.

  “You never did say about Bigfoot,” Julie said.

  “You said I believe in everything. I figured that was a Bigfoot-inclusive statement.”

  “It was, but I’d still like to hear it.”

  It was my turn to drive. I put Julie’s Expedition on cruise control and thought for a moment about a real answer. When I couldn’t think of anything to say, I simply began talking. “Too many people have seen something, heard something, and encountered something for all of the academic types to be able to truthfully dismiss them all as either lies or something else. I don’t know exactly what it is they see or hear, but I have my own theories.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, believe it or not, I’ve taken a look at some of the data. They’re seen in most states, with the exception of the Great Plains where there are few forests left, and sometimes even there anyway. They are seen in all climates, from the southwestern deserts to the northern California rainforests, to the Maine woods and south as far as the Everglades. If they are something other than man, then they are a different species. They avoid people when they can. They have no technology beyond that of simple hiding and escape. I would almost say that they are either who we were, or who we left behind to become…us. And I’m not so sure that we are all that much better off for leaving them behind. Maybe with them we left behind our love of nature, our benevolence, perhaps even our souls. Evidence—the atomic bomb, the systematic destruction of our natural resources, and the gusto with which we slaughter one another.”

  “Bill, you are a romantic.”

  “Hey, no I’m not. I just call the balls as they come across the plate, that’s all. You wanted to know what I really thought. I think…something. In an imperfect world, there has to be something that redeems us, even if it’s our forgotten and ugly uncle.”

  Julie leaned far over and kissed my cheek. She intertwined her fingers with mine and we lapsed into silence as the
green swards of the south central Texas dairylands came into view.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We made it into Anahuac in the pitch blackness of night. It was getting late and we needed a hotel. I stopped us at a random stop sign on the edge of town and sat idling. I didn’t see headlights coming from any direction. On a lark I rolled down my window and let the night into the car. Franklin poked his head up between us, nudged me, so I rolled down his window a bit and he tasted the night air.

  The first sound that came to me was the drone of the cicadas and the crickets in the night, and not too far off, the basso profundo call of a bullfrog.

  “Hear that?” I asked.

  Julie nodded. She rolled her window down and soaked it in for a minute. She turned to me. “You like this, don’t you?”

  “I love it. Say, are you ready to turn in? We could look for a hotel, if this town has one.”

  “Yes, but don’t you want to stop by the Sheriff’s Office and talk to someone. Maybe we can drive by Purcell Lee’s trailer.”

  “Ready to get started, aren’t you? That’s rather aggressive. We’re just here to talk to Cathy Baha.”

  “Yes, it is aggressive,” she smiled. “Cathy who?”

  “Baha,” I said.

  “Sounds like a laugh.”

  “Sounds like half of a laugh,” I corrected her.

  “Is that what you do when you’re on these things?” she asked. “Just hopscotch into town and do the one thing only that you were asked to do, then hopscotch back out again?”

  “Never. Besides, I do not hopscotch.”

  “Checking into a hotel, then visiting Madame Half-A-Laugh and convincing her not to move back to Austin, then hitting the road back home—that’s hopscotching if I ever heard it.”