Pariah Read online

  Gahan hovered over his shot glass. “We all took a blood oath,” he said finally, scornful of the memory. “Pricked our fingers with broken glass and made a vow. Nothing was to leave our little camp. Not a word to the outside world. Complete silence till the end of time.”

  Kurt remembered one of the foolish promises he had made when he was younger. To love someone till death do us part. “It didn’t take your friends long to spill their guts to Rolling Stone,” he said.

  Gahan offered him a tepid smile. “Money is thicker than blood, mate,” he said. “Everybody’s got their price.”

  Kurt reached over and screwed the cap back on the bottle of Bushmills. Gahan’s recollections were shaky at best. He didn’t want the alcohol to further impede his memory. “Who was there, Gahan?” he asked. “Who took the oath?”

  The musician finished off what was left in his glass. “You want names, do you?” he said, working the whiskey through his teeth.

  “I do,” Kurt said, pulling a small notepad from inside his jacket. “I’m guessing that the two other guys in the band helped you steal the body. What were their names? Jack something and Big Boy Lake.”

  Gahan smiled. “Very good, Sheriff,” he said. “You’ve done your homework.”

  Kurt shook his head. “I’ve got three or four of your albums at home.”

  “Gathering dust, I imagine.”

  Until someone broke in and put “Blue Midnight” on the turntable. “Who else?” Kurt asked. “How many people are we talking about?”

  Gahan drew in a deep breath and thought it over. “Seven or eight, I suppose,” he said, rubbing his sweat-flushed face. “I can’t recall the exact number. I’m afraid my brain’s burned a few cylinders along the way.”

  “Names, Gahan. Do your best.”

  “Look,” he said, clearly annoyed by the task, “I can’t remember the chicks’ bloody names, and it would do you no good if I did. None of them used their real names, understand? They called themselves all sorts of wiggy crap. Mariah Windstar,” he scoffed. “How do you expect to find someone like that after all these years?”

  “Gay, darling, did I hear you say Mariah Windstar?”

  A female voice drifted up behind them. Kurt turned to watch her mounting the stone steps on bare feet. It was the older woman from the video shoot. Her soft Botticelli body filled the loose robe with wide swaying hips and heavy unfettered breasts. Her tangled hair was long and yellowish white, the dark roots graying, and her skin was uncommonly fair for this climate, as if she were some fleshy fruit plucked from deep in a rain forest. She stopped beside Kurt and gripped the bar, her round shoulders rocking slightly, and he realized she was wasted on drugs or drink. She gazed at him through eyes as blue as cornflowers, beautiful in spite of their bleary, unfocused state. They looked like something precious left out in the weather.

  “Thass a name I haven’t heard in ages,” she said in a thick, druggy voice. Then she laughed hoarsely. “Let me hear you say it again, Gay. It sounds so poetic in your prissy English accent.”

  Gahan raised his head and stared at her. “Shut up, you cow,” he slurred. “Don’t you recognize this bloke?”

  With one hand clutching the bar she stepped backward to study Kurt, appraising him from head to toe. “I like your size,” she said with an approving smile. “Did we have children together?”

  “He’s the goddamned sheriff,” Gahan explained. “And he’s here to bust me for killing someone, or stealing something—I can’t remember which. He doesn’t seem to know, either.”

  “Exactly how large are you, Marshal Dillon?” she asked, running her finger along Kurt’s thigh.

  “Sheriff, please forgive my wife,” Gahan apologized, embarrassed by her behavior. “Old habits die hard.”

  Kurt grasped her roving hand and placed it gently on the surface of the bar, pressing his hand over her soft damp fingers. “Tell me about Mariah,” he said. “Did you know her?”

  She picked at something on her dry lips and eyed the ring on his finger. “Know her?” she said. “Yes, I guess you could say I knew her, Marshal.”

  “That’s enough,” Gahan said. “Toddle on back to your bed-chamber, dear.”

  Kurt recognized her now. One of the photographs on the bookshelf. When she was a much younger woman she had sat on a speaker amp backstage at some long-forgotten gig, stripped to the waist, wearing only a crushed velvet skirt while Rocky and Gahan poured wine over each pendulous breast.

  “You haven’t introduced us, Gahan,” Kurt said. “I didn’t get your wife’s name.”

  “Gay has no fucking manners whatsoever,” the woman said with a hostile smile.

  Was she Mariah Windstar? Doc Brumley had described his late-night visitor as a small, demure woman.

  “Forgive me, Sheriff,” Gahan said. “This is the lovely Amanda, my blushing bride. She was just leaving. Weren’t you, buttercup?”

  “A gentleman would offer me a drink,” she reproached her husband.

  “I want to hear about Mariah,” Kurt said, uncapping the Bushmills and sliding the bottle toward her.

  “Why are you so interested in her?” she asked, lifting the bottle straight to her lips. She watched Kurt as she drank, and he had the feeling she was showing him how her mouth could manage something long and slender.

  “I’m looking for her,” he said. “Do you have any idea where she can be reached?”

  She set the bottle down hard on the bar with a sloshing thud, then rubbed a glistening drop of whiskey from her bottom lip. “Mariah Windstar is dead,” she said, serious and final.

  Kurt wasn’t convinced. “How do you know that?”

  “Dead as a butterfly that turns into a worm,” she mumbled, tracing the tip of her finger over the ring on Kurt’s hand.

  “Isn’t it the other way around?” he said.

  She was dreamy now, lost in memory, her attention fixed on the ring. “Not through my looking glass,” she said, blinking, her eyes losing focus.

  “Someone stole this ring when you and Gahan and your friends cremated the body down in Canyon de Chelly,” Kurt said. “I’m wondering who it was.” He placed his ringed finger softly under her chin and raised her face, forcing her to look him in the eye. “Maybe it was a woman called Pariah,” he said.

  She jerked her head away, a strand of white hair falling loose across her face. “‘But that was in another country,’” she said. “‘And besides, the wench is dead.’”

  She was fading fast and Kurt knew there was little time left before she became slurringly incoherent.

  “So Marshal Dillon is here to bust us for burying our Shelley in the sand, is he, darling?” Amanda said, turning toward her husband.

  “He’s on a fishing expedition, love,” Gahan said calmly. “Why don’t you shut your mouth before something nahsty snags that luscious lower lip of yours.”

  “Don’t be a bully, Gahan,” Kurt said. “She was just about to tell me how a butterfly turns into a worm.”

  “It’s the oldest trick of nature,” Amanda said, helping herself to another swallow of Irish whiskey. “You flutter your pretty little wings until you get noticed, and when you’re in their net you turn into an ugly flesh-eating grub.”

  Kurt thought about the photograph of the kissing women and the butterfly tattoo on the small woman’s shoulder blade. “Is that what Mariah did?” he asked. “Caught Rocky’s eye? Or was it Nicole she was after?”

  Amanda’s stoned, knowing smile told him more than she wanted to.

  “They were lovers, weren’t they?” Kurt said. “Nicole and Mariah. Like the two women in the photo downstairs.” He offered this idea like a small smoking vial of poison placed between them on the bar. “Mariah was there the night a man was killed.”

  Amanda clung to the bar, her eyes downcast at her bitten nails,

  the strand of hair dangling in her face. Gahan stared into his empty shot glass. Their silence lingered with its own peculiar echoes. Suddenly she began to cry.

  �
�Darling pussycat,” Gahan said, fumbling his way around the bar to embrace her. “You’ve overdone it today, I’m afraid. Excuse us, Sheriff,” he said, beseeching Kurt for his sympathy. Unable to control her tears, Amanda sagged into her husband’s arms. “I’ll only be a minute. My wife needs to crash.”

  “Would you like some help with her?”

  “No, no,” he said, leading her away with her limp arm thrown around his neck. “I’m well practiced at this by now.”

  Kurt waited on the stool. He stared at the empty page in his notepad. He could hear Gahan’s voice swelling in anger, the woman’s cries growing deep and turning into a long, husky moan. Then there was dead silence. In time Gahan returned to the bar.

  “Don’t think too poorly of her, Sheriff,” he said. “She’s having a bad time of it.”

  “She seems a little sensitive about those days.”

  “When she gets this blown she’ll weep over anything.”

  “Even Nicole Bauer?”

  Gahan smirked at him and tried to pour whiskey into his glass, but his hand was unsteady and he splashed a good deal on the bar. “You’ve got to understand something, man,” he said. “We’ve been trying hard for twenty years to forget that whole crazy nightmare. Nicole, Rocky, the fucking canyon. When I left Arizona I drove straightaway to New York and got on a plane for England. I just wanted to be alone, away from the scene. I didn’t even come back for the trial. In fact, I didn’t return to the States for two or three years. It was too much to bear. With Rocky gone my whole bloody world had crashed and I couldn’t manage to pick up the pieces.”

  Kurt had felt the same way when Bert died. He didn’t return phone calls for six months.

  “But you did make it back,” he said. “Eventually. You’ve lived in this place for what—ten years?” He gazed about at the strange fungiform decor. “You and Amanda found each other again.”

  “Yes, the dear girl never gave up on me.”

  “What about the others? Haven’t you stayed in touch with them?”

  Gahan shook his head slowly, thoughtfully. “Big Boy od’d a couple of years after Rocky died. Jack skipped off to Tibet or India or some such place. I haven’t spoken to him in years.” He wiped a puffy sleeve across his wet brow. His head appeared to float neckless on heavy shoulders. “And the birds, well… All the pretty birds have flown, brother. You and I wouldn’t recognize them anymore. They married surgeons and settled down in their lovely suburban ranch-styles and started dropping babies.” With a trembling hand he downed the shot and poured himself another, and this time Kurt didn’t stop him. “They have their aerobics classes and their book clubs and little Justin’s soccer on the weekends. If the old boys knew the dirty secrets I could tell on their wives—” He laughed cruelly, waving off the fragment of thought.

  Kurt closed the notepad. He wondered if he could trust anything Gahan had told him.

  “The body, Gahan.” He stared at the ring on his finger and remembered Nicole’s words: He’s alive. It’s him. “Did you see his face?”

  Gahan looked as if he could use a good night’s sleep. The new video career no doubt required long, exhausting hours of physical stamina.

  “He wasn’t a pretty sight, Sheriff, if that’s what you mean,” he said, sweat rolling down his long forehead. “The mortician had done his best to mend the face, but dear old mum down in Texas was advised not to open the casket if there was a funeral. The good neighbors wouldn’t have recognized her baby boy.”

  Kurt studied the musician’s heated features. “Two hours ago an old freak tried to stick a hunting knife through my heart,” he said, poking his finger into the slit on his shoulder pad, showing Gahan the gash. “I want you to tell me it can’t possibly be Rocky Rhodes. I want you to tell me for certain it was Rocky you cremated at Canyon de Chelly.”

  Gahan canted his head and looked at him with the innocence of a stringy-haired mutt. “I had no reason to believe it was anyone else,” he said, and Kurt sensed that the old musician was too worn down to tell another lie.

  He slid off the stool and retrieved his crutch. “If you’re lying to me, Gahan—if it turns out Rocky’s alive and you know where he is—I’m coming back to bust you for everything in the book,” he said, dropping his business card on the bar. “Think it over. You want to deal, give me a call at my office. I’ll make sure the D.A. offers you immunity for whatever happened twenty years ago.”

  He found his way down the steps and into the pond room, a hobbled man on a single crutch. The photograph of the kissing women lured him over for one last look, and as he stood gazing at them with shameless curiosity, aroused by that gentle hand resting on the curve of the dark-haired woman’s bare ass, he was aware of shadow movement and soft footsteps behind him. When he looked over his shoulder, Gahan Moss was sitting on the piano bench, the whiskey glass in his hand. He watched Kurt with a troubled, faraway expression, his eyes sagging from half a bottle of Bushmills.

  “Your wife recognized the name Mariah Windstar,” Kurt said. “Why didn’t you?”

  There was a long silence while Gahan tasted the whiskey. His attention was somewhere else, coiling around those forsaken years. Kurt suspected that the man might be too far gone to respond.

  “All the pretty birds have flown,” he said finally, his words heavy and slow. “Rich…spoiled…uppity little whores. Fighting over his limp cock. In the end they took the poor fool down with them. You and I wouldn’t recognize them anymore.”

  Two beautiful young women, hues of red and black, embracing under a waterfall. Kurt set the frame back in its place. “Get some sleep, Gahan. I want to talk to you and your wife again when you’re both straight,” he said. “I’ll call and set a time tomorrow.”

  Gahan mumbled something and laughed. Kurt could smell the liquor sweat pouring down the man’s face, dripping onto his floppy collar. “Tomorrow and tomorrow,” he said, lifting the fall-board of the baby grand piano with an awkward bang. “All our yesterdays.”

  Kurt estimated ten minutes until the old musician would keel over and fall off the piano bench.

  “Am I going to make it back down to my Jeep without having to club that rottweiler again?”

  “Kill the bitch for all I care,” Gahan said, slurring badly. “She’s always been too much to handle.”

  Kurt wondered if he was talking about the dog. When he reached the foyer he heard the man mumble an incoherent tatter of words: “Wha’ll you do with it?”

  Kurt turned, straining to hear him. “With what?” he asked.

  “The ring, mate. Rocky’s ring.”

  Kurt tugged at the band, trying to remove it. He couldn’t squeeze the ring over his large knuckle. “I don’t know. Donate it to the Rock and Roll Museum in Cleveland,” he said, “if I can get it off my finger.”

  Outside in the snow-fluttering darkness he turned and looked back through the picture window. Gahan was still sitting on the piano bench, staring at the keys. Kurt remembered a much younger pianist hunched over his keyboard, too many years ago now, playing slow bluesy riffs that rocked every soul in the Wheeler. Gahan Moss had once been a magician on the ivories.

  He watched the man place his hands limply on the keys. Several seconds passed before he played the chord. The notes sounded sour, dissonant. In a rage Gahan swept his whiskey glass off the piano and it shattered across the floor.

  Chapter nineteen

  Backtracking along the county road, Kurt swung his Jeep into a glade of cottonwoods and cut the lights. From sixty yards away he could see the Day-Glo toadstool decals shining on Gahan’s mailbox at the entrance to his private drive. There was only one way in and out, and if the man went anywhere tonight, as Kurt suspected he might, he would spot the vehicle from this blind of trees.

  For half an hour the road remained dark and untraveled. Around his hidden Jeep, islands of snow glowed under the moonlight sifting through the cottonwood branches. The night was clear but cold, maybe thirty degrees. Kurt was glad he’d brought his department cap
and an insulated hunting vest. Even with the roof up, the old Willys provided poor shelter against the frosty wind riffling through the trees. After another half hour of hugging his ribs and watching his breath fog the windshield, he retrieved the emergency blanket from the trunk and wrapped himself in a snug cocoon. There was no sign of Gahan, no headlights leaving the access drive.

  He had drifted into a delta state of half awareness, half dream, when something stirred the underbrush behind the Jeep. He unraveled the blanket and slipped his hand under the seat for the Smith & Wesson .45 he kept in a holster. The Jeep rocked slightly and then he heard a sniffing sound. A small black bear was rooting around his rear tire. “Shoo,” he said, but the bear paid no attention and nosed its way along the Jeep until it reached Kurt’s door. He certainly didn’t want to shoot the animal, but he didn’t want it to paw through the flimsy canvas top, searching for food, while he was sitting behind the wheel.

  “Beat it!” he said in a loud whisper.

  The bear raised its head at him, stared silently and without fear, and then turned and padded off through the patches of snow. Kurt reached quickly into the glove box for his CB-4 Night Vision binoculars and framed the creature as it crossed the county road and galloped down the hillside toward civilization. With the binoculars he could see two DOW tags clipped to the bear’s ears. It had been captured twice by Wildlife rangers and the next time would be its last.

  Fully awake now, the adrenaline pumping, he scoped the toadstool mailbox and the dark drive. He began to wonder if he’d been wrong about Gahan. Maybe the old musician was telling the truth and this entire pursuit was a waste of time. Hunkering down for a long night of surveillance, he picked up the cell phone, dialed his home number, and coded his answering machine. “Your box is full,” the electronic voice informed him.

  Most of the calls were from news reporters, print and television, seeking interviews with him about his auction date with Nicole Bauer. Listening to the messages left his spirits in a place as raw and solitary as the surrounding night. Was there any way out of this? His career was on the verge of ruin. But more important, how would the scandal look from the eyes of his eight-year-old son? He could think of nothing worse than watching Lennon suffer through his father’s public humiliation.