Still River Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ELECTRIFYING PRAISE FOR HARRY HUNSICKER’S STILL RIVER

  THE NEXT TIME YOU DIE

  Copyright Page

  For my lovely wife, Alison, and

  my parents, Harry and Foree Hunsicker,

  thanks for all your help and encouragement.

  Acknowledgments

  The book would not have been possible without the help and advice I received from Erika Barr, Jan Blankenship, Amy Bourret, Victoria Calder, Will Clarke, Kevin Crank, Alan Duff, Jeff Epstein, Ginna Getto, Dan Hale, Susan Huber, Fanchon Knott, David Norman, Brooke Malouf, Barry Philips, Christine Phillips, and Randy Spence. A special note of appreciation goes to Suzanne Frank for her early encouragement as well as her guidance throughout the entire process. Very special thanks to Richard Abate and Sean Desmond for their wisdom, professionalism and unwavering support.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Vera Drinkwater had been a slut in high school, or so they said. According to Artie Galbreath, she’d traded a blowjob for tickets to REO Speedwagon in the back of his Goodtimes van, the kind with the shag carpet on the walls. Artie was the class dealer and liked to sample his own inventory, so you had to take that into account. I had no firsthand knowledge of her morals as I only knew her from the two or three classes we had senior year. As I recalled, she looked the part back then.

  She didn’t appear very slutty now, sitting in my office crying. She looked pathetic, sleazy, and frumpy at the same time in a too-tight running suit with mascara drizzling down her face. Her hair was stringy and fried blond one too many times.

  “Hank, you’ve got to help me.” She blew her nose into a crumpled paper napkin. “I don’t know where else to turn.”

  “Vera, why don’t you take a moment and get yourself together. Then start at the beginning.” I pushed a box of tissues across the desk.

  She grabbed a handful and blew her nose again. “It’s my little brother. He’s missing. He was supposed to come to my birthday party, two days ago, and he never showed up. It’s not something he would do; it’s not like him at all.” She coughed and shifted her weight. Her chair squeaked on the worn hardwood floor. My office was the back bedroom of a converted 1920s Tudor house, on Reiger Street, in old East Dallas. For that era, it was a large room, with plaster walls, crown molding, and built-in bookcases. Everything about the place squeaked or groaned.

  “What’s your brother’s name?”

  She rubbed her nose with another wad of tissues. “Charlie. I mean Charles. Charles Wesson.”

  “I remember him.” An image came to mind: little Charlie Wesson, all arms and legs, gawky with thick glasses and an overstuffed backpack, two grades below me. The stoners who hung out behind the gym used to pound the hell out of him until I intervened that one time. That stopped them for a while. The downside was that I couldn’t get rid of Charlie, always tripping over himself to be in my general vicinity.

  “He’s my half brother; my mom remarried a couple of years after her and my dad split.” Vera tugged at a lock of blonde hair, wrapping it around her thumb. “My stepfather’s name was Ketch Wesson. He’s Charlie’s father.”

  She seemed to say the name of her mother’s second husband with a vengeance, as if she wanted to expel the words before they lingered on her lips too long.

  “I take it you didn’t like Ketch too much.”

  She grimaced and made a hucking sound that ended with the clearing of her throat. “Ketch was an asshole. Ex-marine, big run-a-tight-ship kinda guy. Lots of chores. And rules. Still, he kept a roof over me and Mom’s head when no one else would.”

  I remembered Ketch now. Ketch had been one of those involved parents, especially when it came to athletics. He’d been at all the practices and games for his son and stepdaughter, wearing those god-awful polyester shorts, and a sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off, yelling at the coaches and refs. He looked like an ex-marine, all muscles and sinew, covered by hard, leathery skin. Charlie took after Vera’s mother. Bookish. Bet it was fun growing up with Drill Sergeant Ketch as a dad.

  “When was the last time anybody saw your brother?”

  “Monday afternoon. He was at work and then coming to my birthday party. He left at about four and no one’s seen him since.”

  It was now Tuesday morning. He’d been missing for a little less than twenty-four hours. Too early for the police to be notified but not too soon for a big sister to become worried. “Where did Charlie work?”

  “Callahan Real Estate Company.” She pulled a piece of paper from her purse and slid it across the desk. “I wrote down the address and the name of Charlie’s boss. Also, where Charlie lives. That’s about it, I guess.”

  She’d come prepared, sure I’d say yes. After all, I was a private investigator, licensed by the good people at the state capitol who handled that sort of thing. Why wouldn’t I take the case? Maybe because I tried to have a rule that I wouldn’t do business with a friend, however remote. Maybe because I felt like there was something Vera wasn’t telling me. I didn’t take the paper. Instead, I leaned back in my chair, put my hands behind my head, and didn’t say anything.

  Vera watched me and then fumbled with her purse. “I understand that most investigators work on a retainer. How much would you like?” She pulled out a wad of cash.

  I ignored it and said, “Is Charlie married?”

  “No. Divorced now for two years.”

  “Children?”

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No, not really. He dated a couple of people, here and there. Nothing serious.”

  “Did he gamble?”

  “No. He wouldn’t even play the office football pool.”

  “Booze?”

  “No.” Louder and more forcefully than the rest.

  “Drugs?”

  “No.” Much quieter. Too quiet.

  Bingo. I leaned forward. “Charlie in some kind of recovery program, twelve-stepping it, maybe?”

  Vera didn’t say anything. Instead she dug a rumpled pack of Capris from her purse and lit one. I reached into the middle drawer of my desk and pulled out an ashtray. It was made out of the bottom of a fifty-millimeter mortar shell. I slung it on the desk and waited.

  Vera smoked and then started to cry again. She put out the cigarette and honked into a tissue. Her nose was red now, mottled to the color of a moldy tomato. “He’s been straight almost eighteen months. He’d worked so hard at being clean.”

  “Booze or drugs?” There was a stack of Styrofoam cups on my credenza and a half bottle of mineral water. The minerals in the water came from the rusty faucet in the bathroom, but I didn’t mention that. I poured a cupful and put it in front of her.


  She slurped it down and said, “Both. Mostly drugs, though.”

  “What’s the longest he’s been sober?”

  She sniffled. “Before this, it’d only been a month or two at a stretch. It was for real this time, though, I know it. It was after his second stint at rehab.” Her tone implied that rehab twice was an automatic guarantee of sobriety. She leaned into my desk and the edge caught the zipper of her running suit top, pulling it down a couple of inches. “A year and a half, Hank. He’d been clean and sober for a year and a half.”

  To avoid looking at the top of her breasts I shuffled some papers on my desk. “Vera, here’s the deal. Statistically speaking, Charlie’s fallen off the wagon. He’s on a bender somewhere and will surface eventually. You ever given him money before?”

  She nodded.

  “Then he’ll probably come to you again for a handout. Does he go to anybody else when he’s in trouble? Your mother? His father, a college buddy? Anybody?”

  She shook her head. “Mother died right after Easter, last year. Cancer. Ketch had a heart attack about ten years ago, dropped dead. After Charlie sobered up he didn’t hang around his old friends. Other than a couple of cousins he never sees, the only family or friend he’s got left is me.”

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose and was suddenly tired. Charlie Wesson. Zitface, one of the cheerleaders who actually acknowledged his presence had called him. I remembered more. There was something about the guy; the smallness and insecurity made him mouth off when he shouldn’t. The stoners had come back, a few weeks after the first time. I hadn’t been around and they’d gotten in some good shots before a teacher had intervened. I remember Charlie’s dad showing up later. And slapping his son once across his already bleeding mouth because he hadn’t fought like a man, like the marine he was gonna be soon as graduation passed.

  Vera looked at me from across the desk, one eyebrow raised. The ancient air conditioner stuck in the half window across the room was the only sound, chugging away to keep the morning heat at bay.

  I rubbed my eyes and said yes; I would make some calls and nose around a little bit.

  Vera jumped out of her chair and clapped her hands. “Thank you, Hank.” She came around the desk and hugged me, pulling my body into hers and holding us together a little longer than necessary. I smelled her, cigarettes and cheap perfume covering a layer of grease. She’d cooked bacon that morning. She let our bodies part, reluctantly, it seemed to me, and smiled. “Thank you so much, Hank.” She kissed me on the cheek, turned and left.

  The phone book listed Callahan Real Estate, same number and address as on the piece of paper Vera had given me. That proved absolutely nothing except they’d been in existence since the last publication of the directory. As I dumped Vera’s cigarette butt into the trash I heard a crack of thunder and the first fat drops of an early summer thunderstorm splat outside. I thought about where a myopic ex-hype might run to, or why. I thought about people from high school who might know something. None of the answers added up to anything good.

  The rain fell harder. I knew this not from looking out the window but because I heard swearing in the hallway, where the roof leaked in a downpour. I shared the house on Reiger with two other people: a lawyer named Ferguson Merriweather and a real estate appraiser named Davis Marcy Howell. Both men were in their late forties and on the downside of what once had been promising careers. Liquor is a cruel mistress.

  It was the crack of eleven o’clock and about the time Ferguson showed to work. I stuck my head into the hallway and there he was, all five foot five of him, dressed in a pair of gray dress pants, a threadbare button-down, and a stained red tie. He looked at me and said, “The roof ’s leaking again.” He sounded like it was my fault. A drop of water dribbled down his face.

  “Call the landlord.” I handed him the bucket we used for these occasions and walked around the drip, heading toward Davis’s office, at the front. Davis, the appraiser, had real estate connections that in moments of lucidity he was willing to share. I thought he might know something about the Callahan Company, Charlie Wesson’s employer.

  When you walked in through the front door, his office was to the right. To the left was a living room that served as a reception area. Our receptionist du jour, Amber something, was out for the morning, so I walked straight into Davis’s office, rapping on the door as I opened it.

  Davis sat at his desk with a cup of black coffee, a glass of water fizzing with Alka-Seltzer, and the Daily Racing Form. He glanced at me for half a second, then turned back to his reading. “What do you want?”

  “Information.” I pulled up one of his two extra chairs and sat down. “Ever heard of Callahan Real Estate Company?”

  “No.” He took a sip of coffee.

  “How about a guy named Charlie Wesson?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

  Davis looked up and smiled, a rare occurrence. “I’m currently not married. Perhaps you would be referring to an ex-wife?”

  I chuckled. He was more awake than I thought. “So you’ve never heard of Callahan Company? They office up north, in Addison.”

  He downed the rest of his fizzy water in one gulp and stifled a burp. “What do they do? What kind of real estate?”

  “Beats me.” I shrugged my shoulders. “The kind where you could hire an ex-junkie.”

  Davis massaged a spot on his stomach and grimaced. He took a sip of coffee. “That doesn’t narrow it down much. What’s the address?”

  I pulled the slip of paper out of my pocket and read it to him.

  “Is this about that platinum blonde that was in here a few minutes ago?” He was looking out the front window, onto Reiger Street. I nodded, but he couldn’t see me. He took another drink of coffee and leaned back in his chair. “I used to date a girl looked kinda like her. Dancer at Baby Dolls.”

  “Really.” I sighed. Davis’s imaginary love life was legend around our small office.

  “She drove a maroon Corvette.” He scratched his armpit and stared at the ceiling.

  “A Vette, no kidding.” I stood up. “Fill me in later.”

  Davis blinked and looked at me again. “What’d you say the name was?”

  “Callahan.”

  He grabbed a soft-cover book from the floor and flipped it open. “Here we are. They do commercial leasing and brokerage. That help?”

  “Maybe.” I moved to the doorway.

  “You’re welcome.” He dropped the book back onto the floor and looked out the rain-streaked window. “There’s a Camaro out front. Been there for thirty minutes or so, motor running.”

  I stepped back into his office and looked out the window. The car was beige, early nineties vintage, a trickle of exhaust coming from the tailpipe as it idled across the street. The windows were steamed so I couldn’t see inside.

  Davis opened a bottle of Advil and dumped a couple into his mouth, swallowing them with coffee. “I just paid off my bookie so I don’t think they’re after me.”

  “Maybe somebody’s just waiting for a friend.” A siren sounded in the distance.

  Davis nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I grabbed my gun, a matte black Browning Hi-Power, slipped it into grabbed my gun, a matte black Browning Hi-Power, slipped it into the holster behind my right hip, and covered the butt with the tail of the denim shirt I wore untucked over a pair of faded jeans. The rain had stopped as quickly as it started, a shaft of sunlight slicing through the humid air as I exited by the back door. The rainwater made the streets steam, and the air smelled of ozone and wet asphalt and the heat of the day that was yet to come.

  My current transportation was a two-year-old Chevy Silverado, dark gray with tinted windows and four-wheel drive. The truck was perfect for my line of work since it looked like one of the fifty thousand or so other nondescript, late-model pickups in North Texas.

  I turned the AC on high, pulled onto Reiger Street, and the Camaro followed.
I made a left, went two blocks and turned right. The Camaro did the same. So much for the waiting-on-a-friend theory. At a traffic light on Munger Boulevard I adjusted one of my side mirrors and got a look at the driver. It was hard to tell much about him with two windows and a mirror between us. Thirtyish, kinky-curly hair. Maybe a mustache. Maybe not.

  The light turned green. I floored the Chevy and kept both hands on the wheel to navigate between the line of cars parked on either side of the narrow roadway. The Camaro followed, bottoming out on a small hill at the end of the block.

  In the second block there were even more parked automobiles. Almost halfway to the next cross street, I stood on the brakes and jammed the transmission into park. I heard the tires on the Camaro squeal as I jumped out of my truck and slipped between two cars. I used the parked automobiles as a shield and ran back the way I came, keeping low.

  The Camaro had managed to stop a few feet before hitting my truck. I darted between two more cars and found myself facing the left front window. The driver’s hands were visible on the steering wheel. He wore a tank top. The thin material and skimpy coverage of the shirt accentuated the man’s biceps and deltoid muscles, rippling beneath the skin like stringy meat in an overstuffed sausage casing.

  I rapped on the window with the muzzle of my gun. He jumped at the sound, and I saw he definitely had a thin mustache and hair so curly it appeared to be permed. He said something I couldn’t hear because of the glass between us. I made a twirling motion with my gun, indicating for him to roll the window down.

  He blinked a couple of times and looked from my face to the muzzle of the pistol before shifting the car into reverse and pressing on the accelerator. He probably could have avoided sideswiping three or four of the cars he hit, if he had looked in the rearview mirror instead of at me. After forty feet or so of mashed metal and broken glass, he back-turned into the cross street, put the car into drive, and sped away. I holstered my piece, ran to the truck, and drove off in the other direction as the first of the owners of the damaged vehicles emerged to see what all the racket was about.