Not for Nothing by Stephen Graham Jones

Author:Stephen Graham Jones
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Not for Nothing
ISBN: 9781480493568
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2014-06-15T04:30:00+00:00

The policy, it turns out, was for a hundred and twenty-five grand with Gwen as sole beneficiary. Serious money. The worth-killing-for kind. None of the cases you tried to work in Midland were like this. Your first was a man on Front Street, beaten to death with a tire-iron. Your last was a man changing his tire on the side of the road, some truck or car clipping him just as he was rolling the spare into place. This insurance stuff, though—the follow-the-money trick, instead of follow-the-tire—if you’d just pulled one like this in those two dry years in Homicide, then you probably never would have leaned down over a pool table with Jimmy Bones. Never would have seen Judge Harkness’s breasts through a telephoto lens.

Not that you regret that part of it, mind.

“Either of you care if I record this?” Felson says, setting her silver microcassette recorder on the leading edge of William the Kid’s mahogany desk.

He looks to it, opens his mouth, then finally gets it out with as much tact as he can manage: “Actually, since none of the beneficiaries are here, it might be best if—”

Felson saves him the trouble. She hits the stop button with the ring finger of her right hand.

You don’t need this. Especially now that you can’t be involved—now that this insurance form can be entered into evidence. With it in hand, you’re just another of Gwen’s victims.

“Pay it out already?” you ask William.

He looks to Felson for permission, then nods yes.

“Hundred and twenty five thousand.” You lean back. “That’s a lot of reasons, right, sheriff?”

“For suicide, maybe,” she says. You pull the document across the table, William’s hand following it. Felson stops him, shakes her head. “He needs to see.”

You hear yourself fake a single laugh that sounds like a cough.

“He—he…” you say.

“Signed it,” Felson says. Then, to William, “You wouldn’t have mailed it to the widow if he hadn’t—am I right?”

He nods, makes a face as if he’s about to apologize for policy, but she holds her hand up, goes on. “Insurance companies tend not to release funds until the investigation has cleared their payee.”

William the Kid nods. “It’s not like we didn’t trust Mrs. Gates, Mr. Bruiseman. Please understand. It’s just that—”

“You can’t be too careful,” you add, still studying Rory’s signature, trying to match it up with what you don’t remember from his check.

“It’s real.” William pulls the paper back to his side of the desk. “Cath notarized it.”

Hearing her name, you jerk your head around, and there she is, in her same place at the desk. Same glasses, same hair.

She smiles an embarrassed smile, waves her fingertips to you. Might even still have suckers in her drawer.

You come back to William.

“He couldn’t have,” you say. “The copy Gwen—”

“The one she had for her files was incomplete, I’m afraid.”

“Not valid?”

“She paid a year’s premiums in advance, Mr. Bruiseman. All done in good faith.”

“But—”

“She said Rory would be in to sign it later.”

You probably could have guessed this: that of course that’s what she’d say.

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