Murder Me Sweetly

by Gary Clifton

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

conclusion

McCoy had nearly reached his apartment when the cellular phone caved in the roof. It was Harper.

“Another kid disappeared within the last hour,” Harper sounded like he was at the bottom of a well. “Kid was seen a little earlier at Granny LeBeck’s store. Couldn’t have been Guidry; he was in jail.”

McCoy plunged into nearly impassable evening North Dallas traffic. He dialed Maggs, who said she’d meet him at Granny’s. She was closer to the place than McCoy or Harper.

A rare, light summer rain shower began to fall, gridlocking already jammed traffic. With the use of a portable flashing red dash-light, two detours through bus stops filled with people, and wanton disregard for traffic laws, he rolled up to Granny’s store at 6:13 pm. Maggs’ blue Malibu was parked across the street. She was not in sight.

The listless clerk on duty told him Granny had gone home sick. When McCoy questioned the clerk, he learned he had not come to work until 5:00 pm. He said he had no idea if the missing kid had been there or not.

“Where’s the driver of that blue Malibu?” McCoy pointed across the street.

“I... dunno,” the pimply-faced kid peered across Gaston. “Never saw who drove it up there.”

“Give me Ms. LeBeck’s home address. She might have seen something,” McCoy demanded.

The clerk held out a full two minutes, until McCoy kicked over a rack of potato chips and promised to pull off his head.

As he roared toward Granny’s address, ten miles away in the Oak Cliff District of far south Dallas, Harper called his cellular. Two possible sightings of the missing kid had been phoned in. “Maggs’ car is at LeBeck’s store all right, but she’s nowhere in sight,” he added.

That the murderer might have waylaid Maggs in an alley someway, gave McCoy the urge to vomit. “Red, I’m on the way to Granny LeBeck’s place. Wanna hear what she mighta seen.”

“I’ll get uniforms to check out the sightings, and I’ll go have a look around the store,” Harper said.

McCoy, institutionally not inclined to panic, felt cold fear wrench his stomach like a shattered glass sandwich. Maggs was street-smart, but not infallible. As he rammed up a grassy freeway embankment off I-45 South, his cellular lit up.

“This is Detective John Newman, Albuquerque PD. Havin’ trouble trying to figure out this inquiry you sent over. The LeBeck home invasion murder and subsequent fire. Twenty years back?”

“Yeah?” McCoy swerved to avoid T-boning a city bus.

“Your office didn’t have the facts quite right. Wasn’t the husband and two kids murdered and burned, it was the wife and kids. Husband is the only suspect and he was never caught. I was a kid then, but I recall this case being big noise on the news.”

“You sure you got the right deal, right name?”

“Yeah, Richard LeBeck. They been lookin’ for him out here for twenty years. History of mental disorder. I’ll send you the file.”

McCoy thanked him and hung up. What the hell?

Harper called and said he was at the LeBeck store but had still not found Maggs. McCoy again felt he might lose his stomach.

* * *

He found the LeBeck address: a small, off the beaten path, isolated, frame house, which along with a surrounding picket fence, was painted brilliant, friendly white. The old tan, non-descript car parked in back signaled Ms. LeBeck was home. McCoy barely glanced at the car. He’d heard nothing of what vehicle might be involved in the murders.

He banged on the front door with more force than normal, hand on his pistol.

“Why Detective McCoy,” the old lady appeared genuinely surprised.

“Uh... Ms. LeBeck, another child has been abducted.”

“Oh, my God!” She began to dissolve.

“Did you see... I mean, do you know—?”

“I’ve been under the weather all day. I came home early.”

“Ms. LeBeck” — he interrupted sharply — “we find the details of your family tragedy in Albuquerque to be confusing. Are you sure you gave me the correct story?”

She shirked back slightly. “Y’all are out checking up on me? My God, Officer, surely you don’t suspect that I—?”

He did not and was instantly ashamed for alarming the tragic, old harmless figure. The detective in Albuquerque would have to recheck his facts.

Then, mother of God, a faint cry from inside! The unmistakable sound of a child in distress! McCoy, the charitable, became McCoy the linebacker once more. He pushed past the old woman, followed the sound down the hall, yanked open a closet door.

The small figure on the closet floor, nude, mouth and hands taped with duct tape, was a sight so horrifying, McCoy took a second to absorb what he was seeing. It was a boy about ten years old.

“Where’s Maggs!” he spat as he turned.

The move saved him. The claw hammer head-blow glanced off McCoy’s thick skull, only partly stunning him. The assailant’s chokehold nearly got him in the proper squeeze grip. But neither quite did the job. Adrenaline at maximum, McCoy was not a man easily beaten in a brawl. He whirled and came face to face with insanity — total, complete madness.

The struggle took several minutes. Granny was powerful, fanatical. McCoy was partially stunned by the head blow. The soft old lady was fit, strong — man-strong. She grabbed several times at a large kitchen knife on a nearby table, knocking over a red hoodie sweatshirt hanging on a chair-back.

McCoy landed several full righthand blows to the face before he gained his own chokehold. Granny was on his/her knees and subdued. If he held the chokehold a few more seconds, the prisoner would die. At that instant, he felt that option might be satisfying. He managed to handcuff his screaming, hysterical opponent. Releasing his grip, he stood and added a perfunctory rib-kick.

Harmless old Granny had become the Devil. The twisted expression was a man’s! The face, a bloody mess, had gotten the lesser of the fight. No longer she, he sat on the floor, incapacitated by the handcuffs behind and the beating he’d just taken.

McCoy pulled his pistol, yanked back LeBeck’s head, and squeezed the pistol between the monster’s teeth.

“Where’s Maggs... Detective Wilson? Speak quickly or I pull the trigger.” McCoy pondered blowing off this animal’s head, but hesitated. That he’d killed men who meant to kill him didn’t justify murdering this monster.

Granny looked up and spat in a male voice, “Save it, tough guy. I’m crazy, see. You won’t shoot me. Stick me in your cage. They’ll give me some pills and the stupid doctors will run their mouths. A year and I’ll be out, somewhere where you won’t find me.”

Then, incredibly, the old lady’s voice spoke. “I have no idea where the young lady is, officer.”

McCoy fumbled for his cellular. Approaching sirens broke the silence. The noise of the brawl had been heard by someone.

LeBeck, a man once more, pushed himself against a wall and struggled to his feet. Incredibly, he had managed to step through the handcuffs, his manacled hands now in front of him. He’d somehow gotten his hands on the large kitchen knife.

McCoy stood, pistol in hand, contemplating the ultimate next move. But he’d handled the lunatic once and he could do it again.

“Go ahead, Mr. Copper, hand me to the system. They can’t hold me long. I’ll do younger boys next. They don’t scream as loud, but they blubber and beg and cry more.” The leer was not human. LeBeck edged toward the front door.

Outside the front door, McCoy heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Through a thinly curtained window, three uniformed police officers, pistols drawn, were visible mounting the front stairs. LeBeck, bloody and winded, appeared not to hear.

LeBeck had one more dose of poison to dish out. “Out in a year and I’ll kill again, pig.” Clutching the knife, he reached for the front doorknob.

McCoy lowered his pistol. “Where will you run to?” He made no move to keep LeBeck from opening the door.

At that, the battered relic was out the front door, bloody, wild-eyed, knife in hand, where he ran headlong into the three responding officers. McCoy stepped several paces aside, out of the line of fire.

Multiple shots fired were a single, one-second roar. A fleeting vision of burned children drifted across McCoy’s mind. No stranger to violence or sorrow, he would later feel a twinge of guilt at the strange sense of comfort the gunfire brought him, but only much later.

LeBeck lay dead on the porch in a widening pool of crimson, riddled with bullet holes.

McCoy held his badge aloft to the uniformed cops. “Welcome to permanent rehab,” he said softly to LeBeck’s body.

“Man, he nearly stuck me with that thing!” An officer pointed to the knife near LeBeck’s hand.

One of the cops recognized McCoy. “Whut the hell you doin’, McCoy?”

“Tryin’ to arrest this nutcase for murder of those boys found burning in dumpsters up on Gaston. This ol’ woman is actually a man wanted in New Mexico for murder. He just slipped out of my grasp. Glad you guys weren’t hurt.”

Harper, tailgated by Maggs, climbed the stairs, wheezing for breath, his cigar stub intact. Harper had apparently pried the LeBeck address from the store clerk.

“Looking for me?” Magg’s smile was genuine. “I was searching dumpsters down the block.”

“Naw, Maggs, never gave you a thought..”

Maggs stood on tiptoe studying the hammer wound in the back of McCoy’s thick hair. “I believe a dab of alcohol and a band aid will fix this.” She smiled. “Hammer, you say? Probably broke it on your hard head.”

When they stopped by the Sterrett Center to dismiss the case against Guidry and cut him loose, he was still cursing his innocence. The DNA hit on the rodeo blanket had been a misfire. McCoy reasoned Guidry had to be guilty of plenty. A few hours in jail would build character.

* * *

They were sitting in a remote corner booth at Denny’s, sipping coffee and having burgers. Maggs had stopped by a fire station and borrowed a sanitary wipe and a band-aid. The white patch was prominent on the back of McCoy’s head. Maggs had said little. She continued to thumb Guidry’s prison file.

“Kitchen knife, huh?” Harper sipped coffee. “Hadda doper get me in the gut with a kitchen knife once.” He tapped his stomach and grinned through the unlit cigar stub. “Didn’t get a deep enough bite. You’re lucky too, slick.”

“McCoy,” Maggs said at last, studying the file, “you recall the last name of the fat lady who protested in the lobby of the Federal building because you shot old Big Bud Kincaid?” She looked up at him, inquisitive.

“Nope,” He looked across the table at her, his face a question.

“You do remember capping his butt on the courthouse steps,” she smiled.

“Nope.” He grinned.

“Clown. Her name was Wasthasler,” She looked at the file. “She shows up on Guidry’s Oklahoma prison visitor record as his sister-in-law, Zerelda Guidry nee Wasthasler when she visited him. Somebody too stupid to recognize that word, ‘nee,’ scratched it out and wrote in ‘sister.’ He shows on this record to have a son, Benjamin. Don’t y’all see it?”

McCoy and Harper stared blankly across the table at Maggs. Harper quipped, “Well, somebody had to help her out with a huge word like ‘nee’.”

Maggs frowned. “We joke about those folks being married to their sister. If I read this right, Zerelda Wasthasler wasn’t Guidry’s sister; she was his wife.” She looked up. “Hell, maybe both. What do you bet Guidry was Big Bud Kincaid’s father?

McCoy and Harper leaned closer.

Maggs continued, “And check this out,” she thumped the folder. “A relative named ‘Wagers’ in Houston. That’s the name of the guy who shot you.” She opened the murder file. “Big Bud’s file here shows a next of kin over in Arskansas named ‘Wasthasler’. No telling why or where he acquired the name ‘Kincaid’.”

“And you’re saying...?” Harper asked.

“McCoy, you let the air out of Big Bud. I recall Zelda was raising hell in the PD lobby about Big Bud, not because we jailed Jeremy Ben Fred. Good chance that was at least part of the catalyst that ramped up the Klan and skinheads enough to shoot you and your wife. It was Big Bud’s demise.” Maggs waved the folder.

“Maggs, I’m too beat tonight to get my mind around that possibility,” McCoy’s eyes were tired. “Let’s dig into that in the morning. You might have solved a case twenty other guys couldn’t. We got the threat caller’s voice on tape. We can match it if it’s Guidry or Cue Ball or any of that crew. I’ll deal with it tomorrow. Maybe the info will cause the Rat heart failure.”

Maggs smiled her sunniest and handed McCoy the folder. “Tomorrow it is. Hey, thanks for worrying about me today.”

* * *

The folder was still on McCoy’s front seat when he parked in front of his apartment a half hour later. He tensed as two shadowy figures emerged from the darkness. Both held pistols in their hands. Then he saw the old green Crown Victoria in the background.

“Now Mister po-lice, it’s your turn to die.” It was Guidry, the stench of jail still with him. “You strapped? Carryin’ that Glock?”

“You gotta pay to find that out, boys.”

McCoy carried the Glock tucked into his waistband in a cross-draw hidden by his shirttail. He turned his gun side slightly toward the two sweating men.

“We gonna give you a chance to fight like a man, ’fore we kill your sorry ass,” echoed Cue Ball Charlie Frank Harris.

“Cue Ball... Guidry. My, my, looks like you’re both carrying. Very impressive.” McCoy edged slightly behind a pickup. “You clowns saying we’re having a fast-draw showdown, High Noon style?”

“We real men, mister dead man. We gonna kill you fair and square, just like we tried to do when your bitch wife got in the way.” It was Cue Ball talking.

The Klan was alive and well and had dispatched a pair of armed idiots to shoot up McCoy’s neighborhood. Guidry hadn’t murdered the little boys, but he’d murdered McCoy’s wife. A reckoning was in order.

McCoy, his adrenalin flow rocketing to max, said, “You sent those two skinheads. One was your kin, I believe.” He turned slightly more, nudging the Glock closer to Guidry and Cue Ball. “Since I’m done for anyway, no harm telling me who else was involved?” The edge in his voice didn’t register with the two would-be assassins.

“Nobody else,” Guidry spat. “You nailed my cousins on the street. Got my nephew Jeremy Ben Fred locked up without bail. And you murdered my boy, Big Bud. Warn’t nobody else involved.”

After stupidly confirming the relationship of the thugs who had murdered his wife, Guidry added, “Now you dead, boy.”

With his left hand, McCoy pulled up his loose waisted shirt to reveal his Glock on his left hip, like a movie cowboy. The two nitwits didn’t see in the dim light he’d drawn a Beretta .380 from his right rear pocket as he moved the shirttail.

“Run those rules by me again, boys?” At a distance of ten feet, he whipped up the Beretta and put two in each man’s chest. They went down like coats from the rack, then kicked a few times. Both bodies were still twitching in death as he walked over for closer examination. The little .380 rounds had done their job.

“Gentlemen,” he studied the pair, “If you’re playin’ fair in a gunfight, your tactics suck.”

Sliding the Beretta back in his back pocket, he dialed 9-1-1. Then he called Maggs.

When her phone rang, he stood in the sticky hot night air, porch lights coming on around him.

“Hey, trouble.” Maggs had seen his number with the magic of caller ID.

“You sittin’ down, kid?” he said, as the sound of a siren drifted in on the night air.

“Yes.”

“I ever tell you you’re a genius?”

“Uh, not lately, but you can if you like.”

“Somebody deposited the bodies of Guidry and Cue Ball Harris in the parking lot of my place.”

“God, McCoy, did you...? Are you hurt?”

“Only my feelings.”

He summarized the incident, asked her to call Harper and then come to his apartment ASAP. He clicked off the phone.

Gently, he slipped the photo of Nicole from his badge case and stood in the dim light, studying it. “It’s as settled as I can get it, babe. I can’t kill the bastards twice.” Tears blurred his vision.

Softly, he slid the photo into his pocket beside the Beretta.

A squad car, emergency lights flashing, wheeled into the parking lot, then another, then another. He stepped into the glare of headlights and, for the second time in only a few hours, held up his badge.