‘This doesn’t have to be awkward,’ David said. He smoothed his damp hair with the flat of his palm.
Claudia’s fingers tapped against the computer keyboard. ‘Of course not. But it is.’ She finished her report and saved copies to the hard drive and a diskette.
‘I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,’ he said.
She popped the diskette from the computer. ‘You’re not.’
‘So what’s bothering you?’ He palmed his hair again. ‘When you get mad, you don’t vent. You keep it all locked inside. But I know you’re steamed.’
He’s not your husband anymore, and you don’t have to skirt an issue to keep the peace. ‘I felt like you were using that interview with that poor woman as a reason to see me.’
He laughed. ‘Well, don’t we think well of ourselves?’
‘Am I wrong?’
‘I didn’t steer her to you. She wanted to talk with PLPD, and Delford said you. But I’m not sorry to see you.’
‘David, aren’t you hurt? Doesn’t it bother you I didn’t want to be married to you anymore?’
‘Did you want to hurt me?’
‘Of course not.’
His mouth thinned. ‘Sure. Yeah. It hurts bad. I miss you awful fierce when I get home and it’s just me and the TV. But, like you said, we’re still gonna run into each other.’
The casual sweetness of his tone prickled her skin. ‘Well, I think it’s just best we don’t overdo our time together. The point of a divorce was to be apart.’
‘Was it all bad? Did you just hate me, or what?’ He blinked. ‘I would really like to know. I want to fix… whatever’s wrong with me.’
She touched the back of his hand. ‘Oh, David. No, it wasn’t all bad, and no, I don’t hate you,’ she said. ‘I feel like we got married because everyone said we were such a cute couple. It’s not enough. I know some woman’s going to scoop you right up, because you’re a great guy, and I’ll still be a moping loner. But I wasn’t right for you.’
He carefully put his hat back on his head. She saw wetness glimmer in his eyes – he had never cried in front of her – and he said, ‘Okay, thanks. I really did just want to know.’
David bumped into a smiling Eddie Gardner as he left, the two men exchanged friendly hellos, and Eddie dumped a photocopied piece of paper on Claudia’s desk.
‘Suicide note. With prints from Hubble and his son,’ he said. ‘And it clears up the Corey Hubble case, too.’
Claudia read. ‘My God. Are they going to look for Corey’s body?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘The Hubbles asked we not release the note to the press. I suppose the Coast Guard or maybe the parks department will look for remains, but that’s gonna be a waste of time. Mosley’s inquest is gonna be just a formality now.’ He smiled and sat. ‘Man, I love clearing cases.’
‘Congratulations.’ Claudia turned back to her paperwork on two burglaries she had cleared on Friday, wishing she could slap the smirk off his gaunt, ten-dollar-tan face.
An hour later, Eddie left for drinks at the Shell Inn with most of the day shift. He invited her to go, but she declined with a polite smile.
‘Hey, no hard feelings, right?’
‘Of course not,’ she said. He grinned, slapped an Astros cap on his head, and sauntered out, whistling ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise.’
She waited until he was gone for ten minutes and headed down the hall.
The old files of the Port Leo Police Department moldered in a locked back office. It was quiet now at six p.m. None of the other detectives were here, most of the clerks had headed out, and the patrol shift was out cruising Port Leo.
Unlocking the ink-black storeroom, she pulled on a chain to click on a naked lightbulb. The room smelled of old paper, damp brick, and, oddly, garlic. She went to a wall of cabinets. The files were organized by year, and then in turn by case number. Only a few major cases had not been cleared. She wondered what murderers still walked free, with the warm sun of Port Leo aglow on their faces, full of easy confidence that they would never pay.
Claudia pulled Corey Hubble’s file. It was thinner than she expected. The disappearance of a state senator’s son surely would mean a thick, bulging file. This file was starved for data.
She scribbled her name in the sign-out book along with the file number and returned to her office.
An old file was simply a snapshot of a tragedy. No papers in here could capture the boy that Corey Hubble had been: what was his favorite TV show, did he like chicken or beef wedged in his enchiladas, which local jetty did he think had the best fishing? All these fading papers represented was bureaucratic eulogy.
Delford Spires had been the detective on the case, one of his last before being promoted to police chief. She noted the year of Corey’s disappearance and did some quick math: Delford had been with the Port Leo police for fifteen years at that point. She began to read.
Senator Hubble had reported Corey missing on July 21. She had gone to a Democratic women’s group meeting in Houston, leaving sixteen-year-old Corey and twenty-one-year-old Pete at home. Pete and Faith were recently married, Faith finishing college at Texas A amp;M in College Station, a few hours distant. Faith had not been home that weekend. She had been at summer school, completing her degree.
Someone had typed out a rough chronology, based on Delford’s interviews. Thursday, July 19, Lucinda had left for Houston. The boys spent time at their jobs: Pete working for a video store, Corey for a florist as a delivery boy. Friday, July 20, Corey planned to spend the night at a friend’s house, the friend being Jabez Jones, the son of the minister at the God’s Coast Evangelical Church.
Pete claimed that he had last seen his brother on Friday, shortly after lunch. Corey acted upset but would not discuss what the problem was. Claudia looked through the papers for Pete’s statement and found the corroborating quote: Corey came back from being at his job and he was furious. Pissed. Upset. I asked what about and he wouldn’t tell me. But he said that he was going to go fix what was wrong. I asked him what he meant and he just said he’d teach her. No hint that Pete might have beaten his brother to death at that point.
The chronology went on. Pete worked that afternoon at the video store, then went out for hamburgers and barhopping with three male friends. He got home shortly after midnight. Corey was not there, having planned an overnight stay with Jabez Jones. The next morning Pete worked all Saturday at the video store, starting at nine, and he did not get home until after five that afternoon. His brother was not at home, but Pete did not consider that unusual – his brother was often out. Pete fixed himself dinner and his mother arrived home unexpectedly, a day early from her conference. She wanted to know where Corey was, and when Pete didn’t know, she started calling friends. They were unable to find him. She then reported him missing to the police at nine o’clock that night.
Claudia dug down for a statement from Jabez Jones. It was there, but added nothing to what Delford had already noted. Corey had called and canceled the sleep-over. And then apparently vanished.
The rest of the reports and interviews painted an increasingly grim picture. School counselors called Corey manipulative, unstable, and attributed his behavior to his father’s painful cancer death five years earlier. The boy seemed to have few friends willing to talk to the police. One of Corey’s teachers described him as ‘talented but erratic’ and mentioned he had gotten into trouble twice for fighting in school. The teacher said that Corey has a somewhat twisted view of the world being in place to primarily serve his needs. His dad died, so the world owes him. Clearly this idea is not sustainable. With change in life being inevitable Corey will face some real challenges. I worry that he has a not well-developed regard for the rights of others to have lives separate from his.
Another note in Delford’s scribble: Some rumors that he is sexually active but only when he can be rough with the girl. Cannot yet get anyone to confirm this. He might have left if he roughed up some girl but have not been able to find anyone who would admit to sleeping with him. Pete said Corey dated Marian Duchamp, will check.
Whit had mentioned that Patsy Duchamp claimed her cousin had slept with Corey and gotten slapped around for the trouble. There’d also been the rumor of animal torture Whit had mentioned to her, but she found no notes regarding that subject.
Corey Hubble stood out in her own mind as a kid who lounged in the smoking area at the high school, always slightly apart, not quite fitting in with the roughnecks, not hanging in with the populars (where she remembered Pete dwelling in splendor), not clustering with the geeks for collective security. She remembered he had blue eyes, wide, sad-looking. Several pictures of Corey Hubble lay stashed in the file, a school photo where he glared dourly at the camera, and several family photos. In them, Lucinda and Pete always smiled, Corey always frowned. There was only one picture of him smiling, sitting with his wasting father in a lawn chair, touching his father’s pasty arm. Mr Hubble smiled with the thin certainty of the dying.
She paged through the rest of the file. An immediate search of the county turned up nothing except the boy’s car, parked in a grove of windswept oaks not far from Big Cat Beach, found the day after he was reported missing. A detailed report on the car and its condition indicated no sign of foul play. An interview with one of Corey’s friends indicated the vintage Mustang was Corey’s pride and joy. He couldn’t imagine that Corey would leave it behind if he was cutting out from town. St Leo Bay, Aransas Bay, Copano Bay, and St Charles Bay were searched for his body; nothing. The investigation widened, to San Patricio and Matagorda counties, to Corpus Christi, to South Padre Island, to Houston, to Austin, all places a runaway teen might find attractive. Nothing. The task force disbanded five months after Corey Hubble vanished, although the file stayed open and assigned to one detective: Delford Spires.
Periodic updates followed: a possible sighting in Houston, one from Dallas, one from San Antonio. Nothing resulted in a real lead. He was banished to the limbo of milk-carton photos, pictured on direct mail pieces as a public service. Nothing.
There was little indication in the notes that the FBI or Texas Rangers had proffered much help, although with Lucinda being a state senator one would think every agency in the state would be hunting Corey Hubble. Apparently not, or they had no more success than Delford.
Not a single thing to suggest that Pete Hubble had done away with his brother in the heat of an argument. No physical evidence in the house. No physical evidence in the Hubbles’ small fishing skiff. Nothing.
She stuffed the file in her heavy purse and headed out the door. On the way she talked to Nelda, the dispatcher and main Guardian of the Files. Being a Baptist, Nelda hadn’t gone to happy hour with the others. ‘Do you remember any citizens phoning or asking for information about this case recently? The Corey Hubble file?’
Nelda nodded. ‘Yeah, a guy stopped by. Big guy, late thirties, tall, kind of muscled up some. I remember he wore a lion’s-head chain around his neck, not so classy-looking. I told him to talk to Delford.’
Claudia thanked her. So Pete Hubble, murderer of his own brother, wanted to see the file on Corey.
Why would he need it if he already knew the truth?