Long Fall from Heaven. George Wier
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remains of Jack Pense.
Jack’s face was a mass of bruises and contusions. It barely resembled him. He had been pummeled with either a tire iron or a stick of some kind. That would be the coroner’s job to figure out. Jack’s chest, what Micah could see of it through his torn shirt, was one massive bruise. The instrument of torture was not apparent at the scene.
The body was hours cold. Micah did a quick estimate and placed Jack’s death sometime between three and four a.m. Between the autopsy findings and Rusty’s shift report, that figure would likely be narrowed down.
Micah turned away from Jack Pense’s body. His eyes came to rest on a desk by the loading dock. This was where Jack filled out his own shift report every night. It was where he drank his coffee, where he set out from on his rounds of the warehouse on those nights when his back wasn’t giving him fits and he felt good enough to stretch his legs. In the dead of night when the place was all quiet, you could hear every sound made in the building from Jack’s desk.
Jack’s thermos was there next to the phone. Micah lifted a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket, spread it across his hand and lifted the thermos. With the other hand he brought up a corner of the cloth, covered the lid and twisted it open.
Micah sniffed then smiled.
“Good old Jack,” he said and took a drink.
The coffee, laced as it was with a healthy dose of Irish Cream, went down just fine, even though it was now lukewarm. For good measure, he downed the rest of it in one long chug.
Micah turned and looked back toward the body.
“God bless you, Jackie Pense,” he said. “Thanks for the drink. Now rest in peace, old son.”
• • •
Micah placed the 911 call. After he hung up, he knew he had five minutes, tops, to make a quick inspection of the warehouse to determine if anything had been rifled, broken into, or stolen. He knew that dock employees would begin arriving at any time. He left the lifeless body of Jack Pense where Rusty had found him and made a slow transit around the warehouse.
He was dwarfed by pallets of freight stacked up to forty feet, shrink-wrapped like ancient Egyptian mummies—truck and tractor parts, whole loads of lawnmowers just in from Japan and Malaysia. They made for aisle after aisle of hard consumables and big-boy toys.
At the end of the aisle a flight of narrow wooden stairs led upward into the gloom. A door stood open at the top, revealing a deep well of darkness beyond.
“Now that’s not right,” Micah said aloud. He felt a chill then.
He had no more than a few minutes before the cops would arrive. If he hustled, maybe he’d have enough time to check it out and report to Cueball before they came.
[ 5 ]
Galveston police lieutenant Leland Morgan was annoyed but not surprised—annoyed because Boland’s people had called their boss first, annoyed too that Boland had sent that Lanscomb clown over before he called the P.D. But he was not surprised because he knew that Cueball had been a cop himself. And you can’t teach an old dog any new tricks.
Cueball Boland was on site when Morgan arrived. Jack Pense’s body was being rolled out to the ambulance. It would go to Houston and the state forensics lab for an autopsy. Morgan looked toward the back of the warehouse. Boland was leaning against the rear wall. Morgan walked over to meet him.
“Tell me how you figure in this deal,” he said.
Boland gave him a jaundiced look. “My guard was killed here. My employee.”
“And?”
“The DeMour family owns three warehouses on the island. Besides doing their security, I’m their property manager. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“Sure,” he said. “I already knew that.” Morgan was a tall, slim, middle-aged man with a smooth face and steely eyes. He tried to fix Boland with one of the patented stares he’d copied from Clint Eastwood movies, stares that had proven effective on those occasions when the suspect he was interviewing wasn’t too bright. But in this instance, he felt his eyes blinking in spite of himself.
“Then why not cut the crap, Morgan? You can’t pull anything on me I haven’t used myself a thousand times before.”
“I don’t know,” the man said thoughtfully. “Instinct, I guess. You know, I should like you better than I do since you’re an ex-cop and all. And I should trust you more too. But I don’t. Never have.”
“Remind me to grieve over that when I have time,” Cueball said easily.
“Yeah, right. How about this Pense guy?”
Cueball shrugged. “A very good hand. Dependable, trustworthy.”
“What’s his background?”
“Jack was born on the island. The family moved to Houston when he was young. He retired from a high-stress security company in Houston because of a back injury, but he couldn’t make it on disability and came to me for a sit-down job, which is what he was doing for me mostly. I had him working with a younger man who’s the rounds officer. Jack had a good record. He had no allegations of theft or excessive force. He was a low-key kind of guy who wasn’t averse to using a little diplomacy. Smart enough, but uneducated. He used a lot of painkillers because of the back thing, but I never saw that they affected his judgment.”
“So you knowingly hired a drug addict as a security officer?”
Cueball decided he was getting enough of this fool. “No, asshole, I knowingly hired a good man who was up front about his pain problems and his prescription drug use.”
Morgan’s already pale face went white. “You push it, don’t you? Talking that way to a cop, I mean?”
Cueball gave him a cold smile. “I’ve got a special Texas Ranger commission in my pocket right now, so it’s one cop talking to another. If you don’t like my style of expression, complain to your local senator. Or maybe the governor. They’re both good friends.”
Morgan made a sour face and nodded. “So that’s how it is, huh? Friends in Austin?”
“No. Old friends downtown here in Galveston, which amounts to the same thing.”
Morgan wheezed a little and changed tack. “Who rents the warehouse from the DeMours?”
“Gulfway Discount Stores. You’re familiar with them, right?”
Morgan nodded. “Yeah. A straight-up outfit, as far as I know. What about Pense’s family?”
“His parents are dead, but he has a live-in girlfriend. Micah can give you her name and address. I’ll have Myrna photocopy Pense’s employment file for you. Believe it or not, we’re on the same side here. I’m not hiding anything. Aside from the fact that this is bad for my business, Pense was a decent guy, and I take it personally.”
“Good enough. I’ll send somebody over to your house this afternoon to get it.”
“One more thing,” Boland said.
“Yeah?”
“Now that you know I have friends where a man needs them, it might be wise of you to cultivate me a little. I may be able to open some doors you can’t. I’m not suggesting that you should kiss my ass. Just a little courtesy and benefit of the doubt would do.”
Morgan regarded him thoughtfully for a few moments, then said, “Something to think about. You know, Boland, you’re not the only person with Island connections.”
“That’s right. I remember now. It seems to me Vivian DeMour helped get you promoted to lieutenant, didn’t she?”
“Now how the hell would you know that?”
“I know everything that happens on this island,”