Harry and I walked rickety steps to the door and he slipped the lock in a five-count. The door bottom squealed across the warped floor, needing to be lifted to swing clear. We stepped inside to a smell that wrinkled our noses.

There were plates on the table with cigarettes stubbed out in unwashed food remains. Maybe Bailes hadn’t done the dishes because there was a motorcycle engine block in the sink. If there was a décor motif in the trailer, it was Empty Beer Bottles, the Miller Lite period. A secondary motif was Aryan: a “flag” made from a sheet and hand-painted with a black swastika, poorly, draped over a slumping couch. I figured it was a thematic venue for reading Mein Kampf. Except for the couch, it was all outdoor furniture, probably swiped from patios. The smells of smoke, beer, garbage and mildew fought, with garbage the easy winner until Harry set the overflowing can outside and we opened the windows.

I checked the cabinets, finding canned goods, packets of tuna, popcorn, a five-pound bag of instant mashed potatoes, all from cut-rate outlets. The fridge held beer and ketchup and a package of gray hot dogs. Harry took the bedroom, emerging after a five-minute toss.

“Nothing in there but a porn collection and white-power pamphlets and books.”

We found mountains of porn in our jobs. I used to regard the bulk of it with an ironic amusement, but the content had darkened and now there were widely available magazines and websites that made me avert my eyes and wonder if we were all the same species.

Harry got down on hands and knees to check under the couch. He rolled his eyes, muttered, “Oh shit.”

“What?”

He pulled out a mousetrap with a shriveled body dangling from the clamp.

“Looks fresher than the hot dogs,” I noted.

We finished up. Aside from the white-supremacist and biker trappings, Terry Lee Bailes remained a cipher. Stepping outside into clean air blowing up from the Gulf, I resisted the impulse to strip to my skivvies and let the sun burn away any vampiric bacteria from Terry Lee Bailes’s stinking trailer.

We heard the near rumble of motorcycle engines and saw a trio of bikers through a copse of cypresses acting as a windbreak between the trailer park and the road. They braked to turn into the park. I saw the advance biker look our way and shout behind him and the trio fired their engines and thundered away.

“Goddamn I hate them big motorscooters,” grumbled a voice at our backs.

We turned to see a tight, wiry guy in his seventies. Though small of frame, he had the shoulders and stature of a man who’d once been fit and hard, his carriage as erect as a fence pole. He wore pressed khakis and a white strap tee, a blurry blue anchor tattooed on a bicep. His hair was short and steel gray.

“You’re cops, right?” he said, narrowing an eye.

“As true as the day is long,” Harry said.

“Bailes in jail?” the guy said, looking hopeful.

“Bailes is in the morgue.”

For a split-second it seemed the old guy was about to clap his hands in glee. But maybe he was gonna play air accordion.

“Did you know Mr Bailes, sir?” Harry asked.

“Our biggest conversation came after he moved here few months back. Thought he was some big-ass Hell’s Angel or something, a tough guy. I worked as an oiler in the Merchant Marine since I was seventeen years old. I never gave anyone shit, but I never took any either, you know what I mean?”

“I expect I do.”

“He come a-roarin’ in here the first couple nights on that damn Harley, gunnin’ the engine outside my window so I couldn’t hear the tee-vee from two feet away. The third day I heard him coming and put my forty-five in my belt…I got a permit, you wanna see?”

“I’ll take your word, sir.”

“I jammed that hogleg in my pants and headed to the door. Bailes pulled up under my window. The sound was like a goddamn train wreck that kept going. When I stepped outside he put a finger in one nosehole and cleared out the other one on the ground. He gave me a shit-eating grin with that lopsided face and said, ‘Loud enough for you, Pops?’”

“Your reply, sir?” I asked, knowing it was going to be the highlight of my day.

“I pulled that pistol out and said, ‘Almost as loud as your screamin’s gonna be when I blow a hole through your leg and into the crankcase.’”

“Bailes’s response, sir?”

“From that day on he cut the engine when he got close, glided up between the trailers.” The old sailor shook his head. “Gutless little pissant.”

Chapter 16

“Gutless?” Harry said as we climbed back into the car. “Bailes creeps into a guarded hospital, fights a duel with a security guard, tries to hop out a window when cornered? Nuts, maybe. But not gutless.”

The computer in the car beeped and displayed an address. I shielded my eyes against the sun and studied. “Bailes’s mother, current surname Teasdale,” I said. “I’ll go tell mama her baby boy is gone. You want me to drop you off first?”

Given that Harry had fired the fatal shot, I didn’t know if he’d want to be there when I informed Bailes’s mama. He’d stay in the car, of course, but it’d still be an uncomfortable nearness.

Harry considered my offer for a couple of beats. “Thanks for the thought, bro. But I’ll be fine in the car. I’ll call the hospital for the latest on Noelle.”

“That’ll do the job, I suppose.”

Mrs Bailes/Teasdale lived in a scrofulous bungalow along a drainage canal. Vehicle carcasses lined the street, waiting for repairs the owners could never afford. The yard was dirt and weeds. A silver GMC pickup sat in the drive, tool chest in the bed, not generally a lady’s kind of vehicle.

I waited for a pair of motorcycles to roar down the street, knocked again. For a split-second I noticed a strange sensation, like my knocking made a kettledrum sound. I looked around, making sure no one was playing a big drum nearby, but nothing. I knocked harder, but the drum effect was gone.

“Who the hell is it?” a male voice barked from inside.

I held my ID to the window on the door, saw the curtain slide, eyes inspect. The door opened to a big muscular guy in his early forties, with sunbronze skin and a Fabio-style hairdo. The guy pulled a red crushed-velvet bathrobe around him, hair still wet. The bathrobe was probably an XX-Large and seemed to fit just right. I didn’t like him on general principles.

“Sorry to disturb you,” I said. “Does LaVernia Teasedale live here?”

He began swinging the door shut. “Never heard the name before.”

I put up my hand to stop the door. “Records show she pays utilities on this house. If Miz Teasdale is here, I need to speak to her. If she’s not, I’ll be back.”

“What would a cop want with LaVernia?” the hulk growled. His biceps rippled like fluid stone.

“That’s between me and her.”

“She ain’t here. I dunno when she’ll be back. Maybe next week.” He tried the door-close again, I did the one-finger doorstop. I looked across the room, saw the ashtray and pretty much knew by the smell what I’d find. I slipped under the guy’s arm and across the floor.

“Hey!” he barked.

“Wrong,” I said, holding up the half-smoked joint plucked from the ashtray. “Not hay, sport. Grass.”

“Aw fuck,” he said. “You gotta be kidding. An’ I ain’t never seen it before anyway.”

I pocketed the doob. The house was dark, curtains drawn. I saw discount furniture in the living room, a couple of porno mags on the couch. I heard giggling in a back room, female. It sounded like a voice on the phone.

“Didja like it?” the voice asked. “Was it all in focus?”

I could see into the dining room. Instead of a table and chairs, there was a king-size mattress on the floor, a couple pillows. A movie camera was tripoded in the corner. There was a still camera on a table. In the opposing corner a black tripod held a floodlight, also angled down at the bed. Wires ran from equipment to a laptop computer on a low stool near the bed.