The Broken Souls
J.A. Kerley

For my children,

Amanda and John.

They make life shine.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

EPILOGUE

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by J.A. Kerley

Copyright

About the Publisher

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I exercised broad license in bending settings and institutions to the whims of the story. All should be regarded as fiction save for the natural beauty of Mobile and its environs. Any similarities between characters in this work and real characters, living or otherwise, is purely coincidental.

PROLOGUE

Eastern Mobile County, Alabama, early 2000s

“Are you sure he ran this way? I don’t see anything.”

“Keep your damn voice down. Don’t touch the blood. And just use light when you need it.”

Lucas heard voices in the distance and his eyes snapped open. The world was spinning slowly, like he was caught in a syrupy vortex. Lucas threw his arms out to his sides to hold on and felt his fingers touch grass. It was night, but he saw the dark shadows of nearby trees. Comets were spinning between their trunks, blinking on and off: comet, no comet. It smelled fresh here in cometland, like dew and wet leaves. A very peculiar effect, he thought. Also peculiar: a single star straight up in the sky, flashing, like the comets and the star were conversing.

“I see a car! Hidden behind the trees, branches over it. He’s around here.”

“We’ll have to get rid of the car. Fast. Call for a trailer.”

Lucas closed his eyes and took a deep breath of cool air. The solitary star blinked. Another comet flashed across the sky. No, not comets, his clearing mind registered, it was flashlights pressing through fog. He was in a field beside a woods, damp weeds bristling against the sides of his face. Why was he in farmland? Had he gotten drunk? Why were there flashlights? Looking for something.

Looking for him.

What had he done?

The footsteps resumed, with the sound of bodies pushing aside branches, stepping on twigs. Flashlight beams swept through the weeds and trees. Lucas’s world turned white as a beam crossed him. He made himself lay absolutely still. The light passed by.

But in the moment of illumination he had seen something odd: his hand was red. He stared at his dark fingers, perversely entranced. Then he realized it wasn’t just his hand: his blue institutional pajamas were soaked with blood.

The voices started again. Louder and closer.

“I saw something at the base of the microwave tower. It should be to your left; can you see the tower light blinking above the trees?”

“Be careful. He’s…resourceful.”

A montage of pictures formed in Lucas’s head, recent memories playing like a jittery movie. He started to remember and his gut went cold. He should have figured they’d be coming. He knew too much.

“Shouldn’t the doctor be here? Why didn’t you bring him?”

“Shut up. I’ll circle to the far side of the tower. Keep the walkie-talkie low, light off. I’ll tell you when to move in.”

It was black and quiet for several minutes. Lucas wiped the blood from his hands to his pants, flexed fingers, arms, legs. He could move now, escape. He drew himself into an unsteady crouch as the comets started flashing again. His world turned white. Black. He stumbled to his feet, his knees like gimbals, seeming to wobble every direction. Run! his mind screamed.

“I see him, he’s up.”

“I’m coming in from my side. Get the stunner out.”

Lucas took a deep breath, calculated the angles his pursuers had chosen, figured his way past them. He gathered his energy into his core.

Just as he ran, the world turned white.

“Damn, he just ran into a tower support. He’s down and rolling around.”

“Go!”

He heard running feet. Felt bodies fall over him, wrestle him over, his face pressing deep into the wet grass. He felt metal wrap his wrists, pain. He smelled sweat. Aftershave. And a piercing reek of fear, not his own.

“Zap him!”

“He’s not fighting.”

“I told you to –”

There was a shivering blue explosion and the comets returned, each bringing a hundred stars to the party. They whooshed and tumbled and danced. It was beautiful.

In the distance, the voices started up again.

“There’s something all over him. Jesus, Crandell, it’s blood.”

“Get him up and moving. We’ve got to get out of here.”

And then a mouth at his ear, hot and wet. A happy mouth, it seemed, like it had just consumed a delicious meal.

“What did you do, Lucas?” the happy mouth whispered. “What terrible thing have you done this time?”

CHAPTER 1

Present time

A stalled weather front bred thunderstorm cells from New Orleans to Pensacola. Rain dropped in sheets and lightning shredded the sky. Then, as if on a switch, the deluge halted and the air turned sweet and balmy. Ten minutes later, earth and sky were at war again. Mobile, Alabama, was dead center in the conflict.

“What do you think, Carson?” My detective partner, Harry Nautilus, peered through the windshield wipers. “Time to start loading up animals two by two?”

“How about this time we leave the mosquitoes behind?”

It was nine thirty p.m., the streets almost dead, sane people safe at home. Harry and I were parked near the downtown library. We were working four to midnight, something we did a couple times a week, most bad guys being nocturnal as owls. Not that we’d see much of them tonight; of the five hours we’d been in the car, two were spent against the curb, blinded by rain.

The radio came to life, the signal mangled by nearby lightning.

“DB …Eldredge and …truck driver heading to hosp …ains.”

“Did I hear DB?” Harry said. DB was Dead Body. He grabbed the microphone.

“Nautilus here, Dispatch. You’re breaking up. Repeat.”

“DB …corner of Industrial and Eldredge. Called in by a truck driver. Driver en route to hospital with chest pains.”

We were eight blocks away.

“Nautilus and Ryder confirm message received,” Harry said. “We’re on our way.”

Harry jammed the Crown Vic into gear, roared toward the scene. I figured we left a wake like a speedboat. The radio crackled again. Not Dispatch, but another detective team in the vicinity.

“This is Logan and Shuttles. We’re closer, just five blocks. We’ll take it.”

Harry growled and keyed the mike again. “Nautilus and Ryder have the call.”

“Why’s Logan out at this hour?” I said. “I’ve never seen his lazy ass work past five thirty.”

The radio crackled with Pace Logan’s voice. “Dispatch, this is Logan. Mark this one ours, we’re almost there.”

I felt the car accelerate. Harry growled, “Negative on that, Dispatch. Carson and me are making the run.”

“Goddamn it, Nautilus, it’s ours,” Pace Logan barked over the radio, no longer using Dispatch as an intermediary.

Harry threw the microphone to the floor. “It’s whoever gets there first,” he muttered, flicking on the lights and screamer and taking a right so fast it about threw me in his lap.

Pace Logan was a disgruntled, hotheaded old-timer waiting to grab his retirement pay, buy a trailer in Florida or Branson, and make life miserable for a succession of lonely women picked up in bowling alley bars. Logan’s twenty-seven-year-old partner, Tyree Shuttles, was a new-made detective with the misfortune of being chained to a dinosaur.

Harry cut another corner hard, skidding toward a line of parked cars barely visible through the rain. I held my breath and braced for an impact that somehow never arrived. We blew through a deserted intersection and I saw a flashing red light paralleling us one block over: Logan and Shuttles. We were three blocks from the scene.

“Jeez, Harry. It’s a drag race.”

“I’m not picking up after Logan again,” he said. “No goddamn way.”

Six or seven weeks back, Logan’s mishandled evidence in a homicide case almost bought the defense a dismissal. Harry and I got called in at the eleventh hour, eleven forty-five, maybe. It took weeks of twelve-hour-a-day work to retrace Logan’s investigative steps, supplanting tainted evidence with new finds. Harry’d finally nailed it using information Logan had overlooked in his own records.

I’d spent the bulk of my time handling our standard overweight caseload, meaning Harry had mopped up pretty much on his own. Both of us had worked doubles most days, and Harry’d ended up postponing a vacation with family in Memphis. He was still royally steamed about Logan’s screw-up.

I rolled the window down an inch. Between the beats of our screamer, I heard Logan and Shuttles’s siren. It would be close.

“Next block, Harry. Turn right.”

A radio car at each end of the block had secured an intersection at the edge of a warehouse district. On one corner was a restaurant equipment wholesaler, cattycorner was an industrial laundry.

We raced down the street from one direction, Logan and Shuttles from the other. A semi sat dead in the street, a red Mazda a dozen feet from the big truck’s grille. Harry skidded to a stop and dove into the rain, no time to pull on his rain gear. I slid into a plastic slicker and followed.

Harry splashed toward the Mazda as Logan jumped from his vehicle, almost on the Mazda’s bumper. Logan stepped in front of Harry, finger jabbing, voice angry. The uniformed officers closed in, drawn by the smell of confrontation. I hurried over, rain pouring into my eyes.

“I’ve got the scene, Nautilus,” Logan said. “Get back in your vehicle and haul ass.”

“Not gonna happen, Logan,” Harry said. “It’s ours.”

“I got seniority, Nautilus.”

“Then join AARP,” Harry said. “I’m not saving your worthless ass anymore.”

Logan froze. His eyes tightened. “It was a Forensics screw-up, not mine.”

“You almost blew the case, Logan,” Harry said. “Have the balls to own up to it.”

Logan’s hands squeezed into fists. “For a simple fuck, Nautilus, you’re a sanctimonious son of a bitch.”

“And for a cop, Logan, you’re a helluva defense lawyer.”

Logan made a guttural sound and launched a punch toward Harry’s gut. Harry blocked it, grabbed Logan’s wrist, twisted, dropped to a knee. Logan went down. Harry rammed Logan’s arm behind his back. He writhed on the wet pavement, cursing and threatening.

“Knife!” someone yelled, a nightmare word. Everyone froze, heads turning, hands dropping to holsters.

“Easy, guys,” Tyree Shuttles said, a few feet behind the Mazda. He pointed into shadows by the curb. “I found a big-ass knife. Over here in the gutter.”

Harry released Logan’s wrist. Logan squirmed up, gasping and wheezing, a heavy smoker. He leaned against the Mazda to catch his breath. Something grabbed his eye, and for a moment he seemed transfixed by an image near the sidewalk. I turned to look, but all I saw was water rushing down the gutter, dumping into a storm sewer.

Harry and I jogged to Shuttles, kneeling beside a metal object in the gutter. Logan wheezed up, looked at the weapon, then at Shuttles. Harry backed away and sighed, having the civility to invent an ad hoc protocol.

“Shuttles found evidence, Logan. You guys get the case.”

Logan leaned against the driver’s side of the Mazda, looked inside. He stared a moment, pulled a flashlight from his pocket, checked again, shook his head. Logan laughed without a trace of humor.

“You want this one, Nautilus? It’s yours.”

Logan turned away, walked back to his car, climbed in the passenger’s side. Shuttles shot a glance at his vehicle, Logan sulking within. The young detective looked embarrassed.

“I’m sorry about what went down with Pace,” Shuttles said. “He’s been in a shitty mood the last couple weeks.”

Harry brushed rain from his face, stepped closer to Shuttles, lowering his voice so the uniforms couldn’t hear. “I know you won’t request a new-partner assignment, Tyree. I respect that. But transfer to another district. Get a new partner that way. Logan’s not doing your career any good.”

“Pace is retiring in two months, Harry. He’ll be gone soon.”

“You sure?”

Shuttles nodded.

Harry bounced a gentle punch off the young detective’s shoulder, said, “Hang in there.”

The slender black officer walked back toward his car. He paused, turned to Harry and mouthed Thanks. Shuttles climbed in, flicked off the flashers behind the grille, pulled away. I didn’t envy him the rest of his shift with Logan pissing and moaning and inventing ways he got screwed.

Harry told the uniforms the show was over and to get back to diverting traffic, if any happened to show up. I put on latex gloves, opened the door of the Mazda. The victim’s bowels had released and the car was thick with the smell of blood and excrement. She was tumbled across the transmission hump, her head on the passenger seat, braided and beaded hair flung like a rag doll’s. Her nose appeared broken. Her lower lip was torn. There were wounds across her torso, her blouse glossy with blood. Her throat had been slit.

I took a deep breath and continued my visual inventory. One of her hands looked odd. It was hanging down on the passenger side, in shadow. I went to the passenger side and opened the door, my fears confirmed. Three fingers broken, the digits bent backward. It was unsettling, like a hand assembled incorrectly.

I made myself concentrate on the pillaging of the vehicle – sound system removed, wires dangling. The glove box was open, contents scattered. Maps half-open on the floor, registration, manual, tire-pressure gauge. Sun visors pulled forward. Sometimes folks clipped a few spare bucks there, for toll roads and the like. Blood was everywhere, like the interior had been hosed down with an artery.

I knew why Logan had passed on the case. This one had an immediate bad feel, a one-glance Creep Factor. I studied the woman again, a cold wave spreading through my gut. The smell overwhelmed me and I withdrew.

“She was beaten and cut,” I told Harry. “It’s bad.”

Harry had gone to the car for his rain gear, not that it would do much good. He leaned in and scanned the scene for several minutes, his mind taking pictures. Now and then a detail pulled a grunt or a sigh. He studied the floor at the woman’s feet, put his hand in, touched the floor, looked at his fingertips. Then, aiming the flashlight close to the floor, he repeated the motion.

“What is it, bro?” I asked.

Harry didn’t hear me. He turned his face to the sky, as if looking for the answer to something.

CHAPTER 2

Lucas crouched in shadow beside the fast-food restaurant’s stinking dumpster, wadding cold French fries in his fist and jamming them into his mouth. Untouched fries were safest, he figured. The cast-off sandwiches all had bite marks.

Lucas pushed sodden, foot-long black hair from his eyes, brushed French-fry salt from his thick beard. He leaned out into the light. There was a bank beside the restaurant, a small branch office with an ATM in the drive-through. Getting money was critical to Lucas’s plan. Money breeds money, hadn’t he heard that a thousand times? Like a mantra: Money breeds money.

In the half-hour he’d been waiting, over a dozen cars had slipped to the ATM, drivers making transactions, zooming away. Two of the drivers had pulled to the side, close to the rear of the restaurant. Lucas had watched as the drivers turned on their interior light and fiddled with banking paperwork.

The door at the back of the restaurant slammed open. Lucas froze in the shadows and stench.

“You there, you,” a voice yelled, angry. Lucas felt his muscles tighten, his hands ball into hard fists.

“Me?” said someone inside the place.

“You – Darryl, is it?”

“Daniel,” a voice grunted.

“I got soft-drink canisters out here. Get ’em inside.”

“I still got to finish mopping the –”

“Now.”

The door banged shut. Lucas slithered beneath the wheeled trash bin. His heart sank when he saw he’d forgotten his purse. Made of cheap white vinyl, it lay past the dumpster, almost in the cone of light from the restaurant. The door reopened and feet appeared. Canisters were hefted in the door.

The door shut. Lucas squirmed from beneath the dumpster, pavement grease now added to his shirt and pants, pulled from a donations pile outside a Goodwill store. He’d left his institutional clothing with the other cast-offs.

Lucas clutched the purse to his chest and turned his eyes back to the ATM. Women afforded the best opportunities. But he’d take whatever fate provided and work with it.

He waited twenty minutes, only one vehicle stopping at the ATM in that time, a pickup truck with dual tracks and a stars’n’bars decal on the window. A good ol’ boy, Lucas thought. The type to keep a pipe under the seat. Or a gun.

Not worth the risk.

Minutes later a compact car entered the bank lot: a woman, driving slow. Lucas gathered the purse in his hand and threw it into the shadowy corner of the bank lot, twenty feet away. It landed as the car’s headlights washed over the pavement. The lights hit the purse, passed by, angled toward the ATM.

Slowed.

Stopped a dozen feet short of the ATM. Lucas held his breath.

Take the bait.

The car began backing up. Lucas raised to a crouch. Tensed his muscles. The car parked beside the purse. He heard the door locks snap off.

Lucas was up and running.

CHAPTER 3

The next morning I arose to a sky the color of unfired clay. Harry and I had worked until three in the morning, ascertaining what we could from the victim’s name and vehicle papers. Thunder rumbled in the distance, another storm cell rolling through. The phone rang as I was pouring coffee. It was Danielle Danbury – my girlfriend.

“Carson, can you stop by before work?” Her voice was somber.

“What’s wrong, Dani?”

“Please hurry.”

“On my way.”

Though Dani’s profession as a TV journalist made us natural adversaries, we’d been thrown into an uneasy alliance last year, tracking collectors of serial-killer memorabilia. The bizarre episode had taken Dani and me – I simply couldn’t use her on-air moniker, DeeDee – to Paris to interview an elderly art professor. While in the City of Light we’d become lovers, a condition that remained.

The erratic and overlong hours of our jobs made getting together more chance than certainty, and not counting sleeping, we grabbed maybe fifteen hours a week together. At least that had been the norm until a couple months back when Harry jumped into Logan’s mess and I’d played catch-up eighteen hours a day.

I raced down the steps of my stilt-standing beachfront home and jumped in my old pickup, making Dani’s house in twenty minutes. She was in reporter garb: good jeans, white silk blouse, burgundy linen jacket, strand of pearls at her neck, tiny matching earrings. Her blonde hair was lacquered, a concession to the cameras. She clutched a copy of Woodward and Bernstein’s book on Watergate, All the President’s Men, to her breast. Her eyes were red and swollen.

I stepped inside, my heart racing. “What’s wrong, Dani? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Carson. It’s a friend …she was killed last night. Murdered. I just read it in the paper.”

There was only one murder last night.

“Taneesha Franklin,” I said, reaching to hold Dani. “I was there. I’m sorry. Was she a good friend?”

Dani wiped her eyes, leaned back to look into my face.

“More like mentor and mentee, I guess. But she was a wonderful person.”

“She was a reporter?”

“For a tiny radio station, WTSJ. She was a newbie, spent her days covering city meetings, ribbon-cuttings, yapping politicians …the usual starter crapola. I’d had lunch with her a few times, Teesh asking questions about journalism, me answering. She was bright and dedicated and excited about her little reporting job. What happened, Carson? The paper had maybe four column inches. I can read between the lines. It sounded …brutal.”

“It was bad. Probably a robbery that went haywire.”

Dani and I hear so many lies in our jobs that we don’t lie to one another, not even the little white ones. Dani was still holding All the President’s Men. I tapped its cover, tried a smile.

“You’re about thirty years behind on your reading, babe.”

“It was a gift from Teesh. I told her my copy of the book was about to turn to dust, and she bought me a new one. She dropped it off a few weeks back. Read the dedication, Carson.”

Dani opened the book to the inside cover. I saw script in a neat and flowing hand.

To DeeDee …Who told me how things are supposed to work, and when they don’t, how to maul the bastards messing in the machinery. Love, Teesh.

“Isn’t that great?” Dani asked.

“Maybe a tad strident.”

“It’s how the good ones start out,” Dani said, a tear tracing her cheek.

I met Harry at the department and we went to the hospital. Last night we hadn’t been allowed to interview the trucker who’d discovered the crime scene – he’d suffered a heart attack – but he was now stable.

Arlin Dell was a strapping guy with about five bedside devices either measuring or dripping something. The doc gave us five minutes. I pulled up a chair, Harry leaned against the wall. Dell was pale, his voice light. He seemed a bit fuzzy, like on a mild narcotic.

“I’d just left the yard with a full load of electronic gizmos headed for Memphis. I cut down that side street, rain pouring, me wondering if it’s gonna be like this all the way to Tennessee, when I see this red car in the middle of the street. No lights. I jam on my brakes, about jackknife the rig.”

“You see anyone near the Mazda?”

Dell made a whistling noise, like laughing or choking. “An ape jumped out of the car, ran straight at my headlights, then cut to the side and jumped into the shadows.”

“Ape?” Harry said.

Dell said, “I climbed from the rig and looked in the car. When I saw what was inside, my heart grabbed in me like a fist. I made it back to the cab, called 911.”

“Tell me you didn’t really see an ape.”

“It was a hairy guy.” Dell patted his cheeks. “Furry face, long hair. Like an ape. Or the thing in those Star Wars movies.”

“A Wookiee?” I asked.

Dell shrugged. “Ape. Wookiee. Or maybe one of those guys from ZZ Top.”

“I hate a bearded perp,” Harry said as we left the hospital and aimed the Crown Vic for WTSJ, the victim’s employer. “The bastard shaves and he’s got a brand-new face.”

I’d been replaying Dell’s recollections in my head, picturing myself high above the ground in a cab-over Mack. “You know what really got me, bro? The perp ran straight for the rig, then juked at the last second, disappearing. He ran a dozen feet directly into the truck’s headlights.”

Harry tapped his thumbs on the wheel. “Headlights, engine rumble, windows like eyes …the truck should have scared the hell out of a guy just committed a capital crime. Standard response is haul ass the opposite direction.”

“Maybe he thought he could attack the truck,” I said. “Roaring on crack or PCP. Or maybe insane.”

“He’d already pitched his knife. It was on the other side of the vehicle. If he was going to war with the semi, he was going at it bare-handed.”

“Ballsy son of a bitch,” I said. “Or a full whack-out.”

“Never a good thing,” Harry noted. “Either choice.”

WTSJ was in a squat concrete-block building near Pritchard, a town abutting Mobile to the north. The receptionist’s eyes were shadowed with grief, but she forced a smile.

“Lincoln’s the station manager. He’s on the air two more minutes.”

She put us in a small anteroom. Lincoln Haley was in the adjoining studio, visible through a thick window. Haley was mid-forties, square-jawed, a neat beard. His forehead was high and protruding, like it was filled with songs. Racks of CDs were at his back. He wore a black headset and spoke into a microphone the size of a beer can. He saw us looking, flashed two minutes with his fingers, leaned over the microphone. Speakers filled the anteroom with his voice.

“ …coming up on the hour, time for Newsbreak. After the hour it’s the Queen Bee, Miss Pearlie Winston, bringing you the best in funk’n’blues in the whole United States …Now I’m gonna take you to the top with Marlon Saunders …”

Music kicked in. Haley stood, set the headset on the table, rubbed his face. A man worn past the tread. The studio door admitted a large and brightly dressed woman. She gave Haley’s hand a squeeze. He appeared in the anteroom seconds later, khakis, sandals, sweater, hands in his pockets.

“I’ll do anything if it helps find the animal who hurt Teesh.”

Through the glass I saw the woman put on the headphones, pull the microphone close. She took a deep breath, a big fake smile rising to her face.

“This is Pearlie Winston, queen of the funky scene …”

Haley reached to a switch, killed the speakers.

“Pearlie’s heart is broken, but she sounds like she’s about to break into song. It’s tough. Taneesha was like my daughter, everybody’s daughter. She was …w-was …”

“Tell me about Ms Franklin’s job,” Harry said. “At your own pace.”

Haley nodded, composed himself.

“We’re a small station, Detective. When Pearlie’s not on the air, she’s selling advertising time. When I’m not broadcasting or managing things, I’m the electrician. Teesh was our reporter, but sometimes wrote ads.”

“You’re probably not ripe for a takeover by Clarity Broadcasting,” I said. Clarity owned Channel 14, Dani’s employer.

Haley’s eyes darkened. “Everything Clarity touches turns to garbage; profitable garbage, but soulless.”

“Ms Franklin worked here how long?” Harry said.

“Started as an intern two years back. That girl had boundless enthusiasm.”

“Did she want to be a DJ or whatever, on the air?”

“She did the midnight show for several months. But talking between tunes was too tame for Teesh. Her dream was to be a reporter. Teesh had the aggression, the drive. She just needed more polish. I moved her into our tiny news department. You would have thought I’d given her a job on CNN.”

Harry said, “Was she working a story last night?”

“Not an assignment. But Teesh was always looking to break that big story, find something no one was supposed to know, putting the light on it. I told her we didn’t have money for investigations. But she thought of it as training, kept at it on her own time.”

“Self-propelled,” I said.

“Know who she wanted to be like? That investigator on Channel 14, uh, I can’t recall names …blonde, big eyes, kind of in-your-face, but sexy with it …”

“Uh, Danbury?” I said.

Haley snapped his fingers. “DeeDee Danbury. Teesh spoke with Ms Danbury a few times, asked questions. Teesh called her a kick-ass lady with a mind all her own.”

“I’ve heard that about Ms Danbury,” I said.

CHAPTER 4

We left the station and headed for Forensics. We walked into the main lab and found deputy director Wayne Hembree sprawled across the white floor, tie flapped over his shoulder, glasses askew on his black, clock-round face, one bony arm beneath the small of his back, the other flung above his head.

“I’ve been shot,” he moaned.

“Who did it?” I asked. Detectives get paid to ask insightful questions like that.

Hembree nodded to the far side of the room where an older guy in a neon-bright aloha shirt held a dummy gun and grinned like he’d just discovered orgasm pills.

“Not Thaddeus over there,” Hembree said. “From his angle the momentum would have flung me the opposite direction. My arm wouldn’t have been beneath my back, but across my belly.”

I grabbed Hembree’s hand, pulled him up. He brushed down his lab coat, made notes on a clipboard, then told the shooter they’d act it out from another angle in a few minutes. The Thaddeus guy flicked a salute, faked a couple shots at Harry and me, retreated from the room. Hembree scanned a report and gave us the preliminaries.

“Reads like a robbery gone bad. The car stops at the intersection, the perp runs from the shadows, busts the driver’s-side window, takes over.”

“Why the torture?” I asked.

“Motivation’s not my bailiwick,” Hembree said. “Maybe she said something that set him off.”

“Must have been a hell of a something,” I said.

Harry had been listening quietly. He stepped up.

“I got something feels off, myself. How long had she been dead when your people got there, Bree?”

“Under a half-hour, I’d bet. Your trucker saw the perp jump out when he arrived. Why?”

“The driver’s-side window, the busted one, was windward,” Harry said. “Close, anyway.”

Hembree frowned. “I’m not getting you.”

“I stuck my finger down on the floor. There was over two inches of rain there. I mean, it was raining like hell last night, but four inches an hour?”

Hembree frowned. “Rain fell in moving pockets, the storm-cell effect. If a string of cells went over that location, three or more inches an hour is possible. But a location a mile away might get an inch or less.”

“Makes sense,” Harry said. “One less thing to think about.”

I heard my ring tone, grabbed the phone from my pocket. The call was from the front desk at headquarters.

“This is Jim Haskins, Carson. You and Harry are leads on that robbery-murder last night, right?”

“Ours. What’s up?”

“Got a woman here at the desk who brought in her elderly mother. Mama’s wrought up, mumbling about a purse, an ATM and a longhair in her car. Thought you’d want to know.”

Harry and I arrived twelve minutes later, the wonder of a siren and flashing lights. The daughter was Gina Lovett, forty or thereabouts, plump and bespectacled. Her mother was Tessie Atkins, late sixties, nervous. She kept her arms tight to herself, as if cold.

“What happened, Miz Atkins?” Harry asked as we sat.

She tugged at her sleeve. “I had been visiting a friend at the hospital and passed the bank on my way home. I needed to pay bills. Maybe it wasn’t smart at that hour…”

“What hour, ma’am?” I asked.

“Almost midnight. It was late, but there was a restaurant next door, a fast-food place. It made me feel safer. I pulled in and saw something white to the side of the lot. At first I thought it was a cat or some poor animal run down by a car. But then I saw it was a purse. I thought someone’s purse fell out by accident. It happened with my wallet once in the lot at Bruno’s. Some nice Samaritan took it inside the store. I thought…”

“You’d repay the favor,” Harry said.

“I pulled next to it and got out to pick it up. The next thing I knew a hand was across my mouth and I was back in the car. It was a man with all kinds of hair, bad smelling. He got down in the passenger side, on the floor, and said if I didn’t perform to expectations, he had a gun.”

“Perform to expectations?” I said.

She nodded, arms crossed, shaking fingers clasping her shoulders. “He made me take six hundred dollars from my account and three hundred from my two credit cards. It’s my limit. I was too shook up to drive. He drove south of Bienville Square a few blocks and jumped out. I just sat there and cried until my hands stopped shaking. I don’t know how I got home.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“He took my driver’s license. He said if I told the police, he was going to come to my house.”

Mrs Atkins looked away. The daughter spoke up.

“I stopped by Mama’s this morning to pick up some sewing. She wouldn’t look at me and I knew something was wrong. She finally told me.”

We spoke to Mrs Atkins for a few more minutes, honed in on details, what few had registered beyond her fear. She consented to have her car checked by Forensics. Though sure the perp had made his threats just to keep her quiet, we made a quick call to the uniform commander in her district, requested his troops keep a tight watch on Mrs Atkins’s house the next few days.

“Bait,” Harry said, setting his can of soda on the hood of the cruiser, leaning back against its fender. “He used a purse as bait.”

“It’s brilliant,” I said. “Who can resist a purse? The good want to help, the bad see money and credit cards.”

We were parked on the causeway connecting the eastern shore of Mobile Bay with the city. Twilight was an orange lantern hung below the horizon of an indigo sky. Fresh stars shimmered in the east. A hundred feet distant, three elderly black men fished from lawn chairs, frequently consulting the brown bags beside them.

“After pushing her back into the car, he didn’t touch Mrs Atkins,” I said. “Didn’t lay a hand on her.”

“He threatened her with death,” Harry reminded me.

“He said he had a gun. Two hours earlier he’d just butchered a woman with a five-inch knife. Why didn’t he threaten to stab her, slice her? Why didn’t he ransack the car? And what’s with that ‘perform to expectations’ line? It sounds like a damn stockbroker.”

Harry looked south at the dark horizon, the mouth of Mobile Bay thirty miles distant.

“He probably tried the purse bit with Taneesha but she heard him running up. She closed the door, locked it. Maybe that’s what pissed him off.”

“Something sure did. How many wounds did Ms Franklin have?”

“Over thirty. But he broke her fingers first. I don’t get it. Why he’d kill one woman, two hours later give another a break?”

I forced myself to revisit the Franklin crime scene: the Wookiee breaking the young woman’s fingers, getting off on her pain, then going wild with the knife – poke, slash, jab. Then, interrupted by the sudden appearance of the semi, the perp bails out, runs wildly into the truck’s headlights, veers away into the night.

“Did Forensics find any blood in Mrs Atkins’s vehicle?”

Harry said, “No blood, no hair, no trace of any evidence.”

“At least we got a knife.”

Harry finished his can of soda, crumpled the can like paper, bouncing it in his hand. “With nada on the prints. An uncharted whacko.”

“Is this going to turn weird, brother?” I asked.

“Going to?” he said.

We heard a ship’s horn and turned to watch a freighter slipping from the mouth of the Mobile River. The ship’s bridge was at the stern and lighted. The only other light was at the bow. Somewhere between the two points were hundreds of feet of invisible ship. A minute later, its wake reached us, hissing against the shoreline with a sound like rain.

CHAPTER 5

Lucas stood in the piss-stinking service station restroom, door locked, and foamed restroom soap over his torso, patting dry with rough paper towels. Once more he counted his money, tight clean bills, over a thousand dollars’ worth. Seed money. The next step was to turn it into working capital. A quick way of doing that was to find and supply a product for which there was great demand.

He could get product. What he needed was a distributorship.

Lucas studied the face in the grimy mirror: nothing but black eyes and round hole of mouth deep in a sea of black hair. Scary, hideous even, like he’d escaped from hell. But then, how else was he supposed to look?

Lucas scowled into the mirror, bared his teeth like a rabid dog, growled. Snapped his teeth at his image.

What’s that face mean, Lucas?

Dr Rudolnick’s voice suddenly in Lucas’s head.

“It’s how pissed off I am, Doctor.”

“You look angry enough to kill, Lucas. Are you really that angry?”

“I guess not, Doctor. Not today, at least.”

“Good, Lucas. Let’s do some deep breathing and visualizations, all right?”

Lucas laughed and tucked the shirt into his pants. He opened the restroom door. Lights in the distance, bars, clubs. Lowlife joints with lowlife people, the kind of folks attuned to nontraditional distribution networks. Something in the automotive segment of the market.

The nearest bar, a hundred feet distant, had a window blinking LUCKY’S in green neon script. Maybe it was an omen.

Lucas stepped out into the night, music playing loud in his head, snapping his fingers to an old funk piece by Bootsy Collins, “Psychoticbumpschool”. He angled toward Lucky’s.

CHAPTER 6

“Give me a couple minutes with Ms Franklin, Clair?” I said. “Please?”

Dr Clair Peltier, chief pathologist for the Mobile office of the Alabama Forensics Bureau, stared at me with breathtaking blue eyes. Between us, on a stainless steel table, rested the draped body of Taneesha Franklin. Her face bore the misshaping of the blows she’d been dealt; her bare arms outside the drape displayed puckered knife wounds. Her head lolled to the side, the gaping slash beneath her chin like a wide and hungry second mouth.

“Ryder …”

“Three minutes?”

She sighed. “I’ll run down the hall and get a coffee. It’s a two-minute run.”

“Thanks, Clair.”

She waved my appreciation away and left the room, her green surgical gown flowing as she moved. Not many women could make a formless cotton wrapping look good, but Clair pulled it off.

Perhaps it was peculiar only to me, but as an investigator – or maybe just as a human being – I always sought a few moments with the deceased before the Y-cut opened the body, transformed it. I wanted time alone with my employer. Not the city, nor the blind concept of justice. But the person I was truly working for, removed from life by the hand of another, early, wrongfully. Sometimes I stood with the Good, and often I stood with the Bad. Most of the human beings I stood with fell, like the bulk of us, into a vast middle distance, feet in the clay, head in the firmament, the heart suspended between.

From what Harry and I had discerned, Taneesha Franklin had lived her brief life with honor, focus, and a need to be of service to others. She had only recently discovered journalism and through it hoped to better the world.

Good for you, Teesh, I thought.

Clair stepped back through the door. Without a word, she walked to the body, picked up a scalpel, and went to work. I stood across the table, sometimes watching, sometimes closing my eyes.

I generally attended the postmortems, while Harry spent more time with the Prosecutor’s Office. We joked that I preferred dead bodies to live lawyers. The truth was that I felt comfortable in the morgue. It was cool and quiet and orderly.

“Where was she found, Carson?” Clair asked, staring into the bisected throat, muscles splayed outward.

“Semi-industrial area by the docks. Warehouses, light industry.”

“Not crowded, then? No one very near?”

“It’s normally sort of a hooker hangout. But the rain kept them in that night. Why?”

“Her vocal cords were injured. Lacerated.”

“From manual strangulation? The knife wound?”

Clair pursed her roseate lips. “Screaming, probably. I wondered why no one heard her.”

The procedure took a bit over two hours. Clair snapped off her latex gloves and dropped them into the biohazard receptacle beside the table. She removed her cloth mask and I saw a lipstick kiss printed in the fabric. Clair uncovered her head, shaking out neat, brief hair, as black and glossy as anthracite. She pressed her fists against her hips and stretched her spine backward.

“I’m getting too old for this, Ryder.”

“You’re forty-four. And in better shape than most people ten years younger.”

“Don’t try charm, Ryder,” she said. “Unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

I was perhaps her only colleague this side of God who used Clair’s first name. Not knowing of her insistence on formality, I’d used it when we were introduced. Those with us had grimaced in anticipation of a scorching correction, but for some reason, she’d let it stand, addressing me solely by my last name as a countermeasure.

When I’d first met Clair, I’d considered her five years older than her actual age, the result of a stern visage and a husband in his sixties. I would later come to realize the latter bore certain responsibility for the former, Clair’s visage softening appreciably after hubby was sent a-packing.

Two years ago, a murder investigation had cut directly through the center of Clair’s personal life. The revelations of the investigation had wounded her, and I’d been present at a moment of her vulnerability, a time she’d needed to talk. We’d stood beneath an arbor of roses in her garden and Clair had revealed pieces of her past – less to me than to herself – suddenly grasping meaning from the shadows of long-gone events.

They were startling revelations, and though I disavowed the notion, she had believed me the vehicle for the transformative moment.

“When will the preliminary be ready?” I asked, pulling my jacket from a hanger on the wall.

“In the a.m. And don’t expect it before ten thirty.”

Though our relationship was professional, there had been times – as in her garden – when the world shifted and for fleeting moments we seemed able to look into one another with a strange form of clarity. A believer in reincarnation might have suspected we’d touched in a former life, spinning some thread that even time and distance left unsevered.

“I’ll be here tomorrow at ten thirty-one, Clair.”

She walked away, talking over her shoulder.

“How about sending Harry? Be nice to see someone with some sense for a change.”

Though at times the thread seemed tenuous.

I was climbing into the Crown Victoria when my cellphone rang, Harry on the other end. “Hembree wants to see us at the lab. How about you whip by and grab me. I’ll be out front.”

We blew into Forensics fifteen minutes later. Hembree leaned against a lab table outside his office. He was so skinny, the lab coat hung in white folds like a wizard’s robe.

He said, “You got great eyes, Harry.”

Harry winked. “Thanks, Bree. You got a nice ass. Wanna grab a drink after work?”

Hembree frowned. “I meant catching the water depth on the floorboards. I called the regional office of the National Weather Service, talked to the head meteorologist. They archive Dopplers. He reran the night’s readings, checking time, location, and storm cell activity.”

“Upshot?” Harry asked.

“The area where the vic’s vehicle sat took pretty light rain, overall. Lightest in the city, at least in the hour before it was spotted. About an inch fell in that hour.”

“Why so much in the car, Bree? It was a lake.”

“Maybe a leak along the roof guttering caught rain, channeled it inside. I’ll check it out.”

“Anything else turn up?”

Hembree said, “The knife Shuttles pulled off the street? Made years ago by the Braxton Knife Company in Denver. The handle’s bone. The blade’s carbon steel, not stainless, why it looks corroded. It’s a damn nice knife.”

“How about prints? Anything new?”

“Pulled a thumb, forefinger and middle finger, some palm. Ran every possible database. Nada. Nothing. Zip.”

“You got a Wookiee database?” Harry said.

“What?”

We waved it off and walked out the door.

CHAPTER 7

Harry and I spent the rest of the day wandering the industrial neighborhood where Taneesha Franklin had died. Normally, the area was a cruising ground for hookers, but rain was keeping them inside. We corralled as many denizens as possible, asking about the bearded longhair. The killing had frightened most of the girls, guys, and question marks that hawked wares from the corners. They tried to be helpful, but we ended the day with a zero, heading home at six.

Home, to me, was thirty miles south, to Dauphin Island. It’s an expensive community, but when my mother passed away, I inherited enough to buy it outright. It was actually my second home on the island, the first turned to kindling by Hurricane Katrina. I never complain about paying insurance premiums anymore.

I pulled onto my short street and saw a white Audi in my drive, Danielle Danbury’s car, the bumper festooned with birdwatching and wildlife stickers. I parked beneath my house, climbed the stairs and stepped inside.

Dani yelled, “I’m heading out to the deck. Join me.” The deck doors slid closed with a thump. I stood in the living room hearing only the soft hiss of the air conditioner. Normally Dani would have met me at the door.

What was up?

I paused to yank off my tie, toss it over a chair, follow it with my jacket. The shoulder holster and weapon went to my bedside table.

I heard the deck door slide open. “Where you at, Carson?”

“Changing.”

“Get it in gear, Pogobo.”

Pogobo – and its diminutive, Pogie – came from po-lice go-lden bo-y, coined by Dani after Harry and I were made Officers of the Year by the Mayor. Most of the time we were homicide detectives, but once in a great while we were the Psychopathological and Sociopathological Investigative Team. PSIT, or Piss-it, as everyone called it, started as a public relations gimmick a few years back, never intended to be activated. But somehow it was, somehow it worked, and somehow it bought us Officers of the Year commendations. The honor turned out to be, as Harry had promised, worth less than mud.

I slipped into cutoffs, T-shirt, and running shoes a half-mile short of disintegrating. At the kitchen sink I slapped cool water over my face and glanced out the window. Dani paced beside the deck table; on it something hidden beneath my kitchen towel. I dried my face on an oven mitt and went to the deck.

The waning day remained beautiful and springlike, enhanced by a salt tang breezing up from the strand. Gulls followed a school of baitfish in the small breakers, keening and diving. Several pleasure boats bounced across the Gulf, including a big white Bertram I’d seen a lot lately. High above, a single-engine plane banked at the far edge of the sky, so small it looked like a lost kite.

Dani stood beside the towel-shrouded tabletop in white shorts and red tank top. Sunlight shimmered from her ash-blonde hair, her big gray eyes made blue by the bright sky. I raised my eyebrows at the table.

“A magic show? You’re going to make a rabbit appear?”

She snapped off the towel. Centering the table was a bottle of pricey champagne iced down in a plastic salad bowl, flanked by my two champagne flutes, $1.49 apiece at Big Lots.

Dani thumbed the cork from the bottle and froth raced out behind it. She filled the glasses, handed one to me.

“We’re drinking to my elevation from reporter to…” she lifted her glass in toast, “a full-fledged anchor.”

I stared like she was speaking in tongues. “What?”

“They’re making me an anchor, Carson. I start this week.”

“This is out of the blue.”

I saw the edge of a frown. “Not really. I’ve felt it coming for a few weeks, caught hints. Heard a few feelers.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s June, Carson. When was the last time we had a real conversation? Early April?”

“I was working.” I heard myself get defensive.

“I tried to tell you a couple weeks back. But one time you shushed me and went on writing in your notepad, and the other time I looked over and you were asleep.”

“Why not a third attempt?”

She didn’t appear to hear the question.

“I’ll start by subbing for anchors when they’re out. Do weekends. Get viewers used to me.”

“They’re already used to you.”

“People only know me as a woman holding a microphone. It’s important the audience comes to know me as an approachable presence. Someone they want to spend time with. Someone they trust. It’s like a relationship with the viewer, something you give them.”

It sounded like the kind of hoo-hah she’d always laughed at in the past. I was wondering what I’d missed or who she’d been talking to about viewer relationships and approachable whatevers.

“What’s this lead to?” I said.

“Regular hours, at least for this biz.”

“All we have now are weekends, and only sometimes at that. Didn’t you just say that’s when you’ll be –”

“A trial period, that’s all. Break-in period. Things will change.”

“Seeing less of each other is better for each other?”

“I can’t help it, Carson. This is my chance to try a high-profile position. Plus the money is almost double.” She changed subjects. “You already rented your tuxedo for Saturday, right?”

I slapped my forehead. Channel 14 was having their annual to-do on Saturday night, a formal event. I guess I’d figured if I didn’t have a tux, I didn’t have to attend; sartorial solipsism, perhaps.

“Get it tomorrow, Carson. This is the big wing-ding of the year and all the honchos from Clarity will be there. I’ve got to make an anchor-level impression.”

We sat on the deck and I listened as Dani told me things I probably should have heard weeks back. Her job change seemed rational and good for us in the long run; more time, regular hours. But somewhere, behind the hiss of the waves and gentle blues drifting from the deck speakers, I heard a faint but insistent note of discord, like my mind and heart were playing opposing notes.

CHAPTER 8

I arrived at the department at eight the next morning. It was quiet, a couple of dicks on the phones, digging. Most of the gray cubicles were empty. Pace Logan was sitting at his desk and staring into the air. I didn’t see Shuttles and figured he was out doing something Logan didn’t understand, detective work maybe. After grabbing a cup of coffee from the urn and tossing a buck in the kitty for a pair of powdered doughnuts, I headed to the cubicled, double-desk combo forming Harry’s and my office.

I walked into our space, saw Harry on his hands and knees on the floor, looking under his desk.

“That’s right. Crawl, you miserable worm,” I snarled.

He looked up and rolled his eyes. “There’s a couple photos missing from the murder book. I figured they dropped down here.”

The murder books – binders holding the investigational records of cases – had sections with plastic sleeves to hold crime-scene and relevant photos, trouble being the sleeves didn’t hold very well.

“What’s in the pix?” I asked.

Harry stood, brushed the knees of his lemon yellow pants, and cast a baleful eye at the wastebasket beside the desk. It wouldn’t be the first time something disappeared over the side, dumped by the janitorial crew.

“I dunno. I got the file numbers. I’ll call over and get some reprints.”

I looked at the pile on his desk. Harry had been checking records and information removed from Taneesha Franklin’s office, adding potentially useful pieces to the book.

“Finding anything interesting, bro?” I asked.

“Funny you should ask. I was going over Ms Franklin’s long-distance records. Here’s a couple calls caught my eye.”

He tapped the paper with a thick digit. I looked at the name.

“The state pen at Holman?” I said. “What’s that about?”

“Eight calls in two days. Seven are under a minute. The final one lasts for eleven minutes.”

I nodded. “Like she finally got through to someone.”

Harry jammed the phone under his ear, tapped in the numbers. “I’ll call the warden, see when we can come up and hang out. You want a king or two doubles in your cell?”

The warden was a pro, not a bureaucrat, and said we’d be welcome any time. We pointed the Crown Vic north. Two hours later, we were checking into prison.

Warden Malone was a big, fiftyish guy with rolled-up white sleeves and a tie adorning his desk instead of his neck. His hair was gray and buzz-cut. Loop a whistle around his neck and he’d have been Hollywood’s idea of a high school football coach. We sat in his spartan office overlooking the main yard.

“I had the visitor logs checked,” Malone said, patting a sheaf of copies. “T. Franklin was here on Wednesday before last, nine a.m. She designated herself as Media, representing WTSJ. Ms Franklin spent twenty-one minutes with Leland Harwood. It appears to have been her sole visit to the prison.”

“What’s Leland Harwood’s story?” Harry asked.

Malone leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Low-level enforcer type, legbreaker. A couple thefts in his package, assaults. He bought his ticket here last spring, when he shot a guy dead in an alley behind a bar. A fight.”

“The guy he killed was in Mobile?” Harry asked.

“Harwood and some other moke got into a tussle at a Mobile bar. Went outside. Bar patrons heard a shot, found the other guy dead. Come court day, everyone in the bar swore the other guy started the fight. The prosecution had no choice but to let Harwood plea to Manslaughter two, light time.”

“Maybe that’s how it went down,” Harry said.

“My boy’s an attorney in Daphne,” Malone said. “Prosecutor, naturally. He knows a lot of folks at the Mobile Prosecutor’s Office, including the lady who handled Harwood’s case. She says the patrons weren’t so in tune with Harwood’s story on the night of the action. Only when they hit the stand did they sing his innocence. Note for note, too. Like they’d had some choral training, you know what I mean.”

“Paid performances,” I said.

“Sure sounded like it,” Malone said, tossing the file back on his desk and looking between Harry and me. “Harwood’s a white guy. Thirty-one years old. Probably establish a better bond with Detective Ryder. I’d suggest the visitors’ room, not the interrogation facility. He’ll clam in an interrogation room. But Leland’s a talkative sort in a visitors’-room environment. Probably yap your ear off.”

“Outside of chatty,” I asked, “what’s Harwood like?”

“An eel,” Malone said. “Or maybe a chameleon.”

“Whatever he needs to be,” Harry said. It was a common trait in the con community.

CHAPTER 9

“I have a new girlfriend here in the joint, Detective Ryder. She likes for me to use Listerine. You use Listerine, Detective? My little girlie thinks the Listerine keeps me kissing-sweet. Fresh, you know?”

I looked through an inch of smeared Plexiglas at the face of Leland Harwood, babbling into the phone. It was a short-distance call: three feet to the visitor’s phone in my hand. Harwood had a scrinched face set into a head outsize for his body, like his mama birthed the head a couple years before the rest of him dropped out, the head getting a head start on growing.

“There’s only one problem, Detective Ryder …”

I shifted my gaze to Harwood’s hands. Scarred and ugly, tats scrawled across them, the classic LOVE on one set of knuckles, HATE on the other. Couldn’t these guys ever think of something different: DAMN/DUMB or LOST/LIFE or FLAT/LINE?

“The Listerine kinda burns when I rub it on my asshole.”

Harwood started laughing, a start-stop keening like the shower scene from Psycho. He laughed with his mouth wide, showing a squirming tongue and the black ruination of his molars. He tapped the glass with his phone, stuck it back to his lips.

“Hey Dick-tective, stop daydreaming. I’m telling you about my love life. You should be takin’ notes or something.”

“All I want to know is what you talked about with Taneesha Franklin.”

“Who?” The outsized head grinned like a jack o’lantern.

“A reporter. From WTSJ in Mobile. She signed in for a visit a week back. The sheet shows you spent twenty minutes talking to her.”

Harwood pretended to pout. “Why isn’t the little sweetie coming to see me anymore? You’re cute, Ryder. But she was cuter. A touch plump, but I like cushion when I’m pushin’.” He did the Psycho laugh again.

“She’s dead, Leland.”

He froze. The smart-ass attitude fell from the milky eyes, replaced with a glimmer of fear. “How’d she die?” No more comedian in his voice.

“Robbery, looks like. She took a bad beating, Leland. Torture, even.”

Harwood leaned toward the glass. “Torture how?”

“She had three broken fingers, Leland. That sounds like something an enforcer type might do to get information. Wasn’t that your line of work?”

“I had a lotta lines of work. Man’s got to make a liv—” His lip curled. I thought it was a sneer, but it turned into a pained face. He punched his sternum, belched. I swear I could smell it through the glass.

“I’m clean, Ryder. I been behaving. Taking classes. Working in the library. Being a good boy. First time I get up before the parole board, I’m out.”

“For about two weeks. I know your type, Leland. You got no other talent than crime.”

He grinned, a man holding four aces with a backup ace in his shoe.

“I’m set up this time. No more day laborer. I’m made in the shade from here on out.” Harwood caught himself. Winced.

“What is it?” I said.

He belched again, thumped his belly with his fist. “Indigestion. A year of eating the crap they serve in this joint.”

“You reserved your table here when you killed a man, Leland. Bon appetit.”

“Fuck you.” He winced again. “Jeez, I need a fucking tub of Bromo.”

Another prisoner entered the convict side of the visitors’ room, a man with piercing gray eyes and dark hair falling in unwashed ringlets. His forehead was deeply scarred between both temples, as if an ax blade had been drawn through the flesh like a plow. He was rock-muscled, and I took him for one of those guys with nothing to do but pump iron all day. I’ve never understood why prisons give violent criminals the equipment to turn themselves into weapons. They should give them canasta lessons.

The guy walked over and sat two chairs down from Harwood, dividers between sections allowing a modicum of privacy. Harwood shot the guy a glance, frowned, looked quickly away.

The door to the visitors’ side opened. I glanced over and saw a wide-shouldered Caucasian with curly yellow-blond hair, eyes deep-set above high cheekbones. He was dressed in a suit: silk, brown. A gold watch flashed from his wrist. He seemed guided by unseen currents in the room, pausing, turning, evaluating. Then pulling out the chair one booth over, a half-dozen feet away. His eyes looked through me, then turned to the man across the Plexiglas. He picked up the phone, started a whispered conversation. A lawyer, I figured.

I turned back to Harwood. He was spitting on the floor, wiping away saliva with the back of his hand.

“I’m done talking, Ryder. I’m sorry about the little sweetie. She was nice. Sincere, you know. But naïve.”

“Naïve?”

“It’s a mean old world, Detective. Little sweetie-tush was too busy playing reporter to understand there are people out there who can …” Harwood paused, swallowed heavily, made a wet noise.

“You all right, Leland?” I asked. “You’re looking strange.”

“’Flu coming on, maybe. I don’t feel good.”

“What didn’t Taneesha understand, Harwood?”

Harwood wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’m feeling rotten all of a sudden.”

“Tell me about Taneesha. Then you can head to the infirmary.”

Harwood suddenly stopped speaking and looked into his lap. His eyes widened.

“Jesus.”

“What is it, Leland?”

“I pissed myself, and didn’t even feel it. What the hell’s happening?”

He dropped the phone to the counter and stood unsteadily. His blue institutional pants were dark to the knees with urine. His face was white, his hair sweat-matted to his forehead. He convulsed from somewhere in his midsection, dropping to his knees, toppling the chair.

“Guard,” I yelled to the uniformed man in the corner of the visitors’ area. “Sick man here.”

Harwood clung to the counter with his tattooed fingers, weaving. I watched him shudder to restrain vomit, saw his cheeks fill, his mouth open. A flood of yellow foam poured over his tongue. His eyes rolled into white and he slid to the floor.

Doors on the containment side burst open and two uniformed men rushed to Harwood. He convulsed on the floor, heels and head slamming the gray concrete. His bowels opened.

I suddenly found myself alone on the visitors’ side, the man beside me having retreated from the horrific spectacle. The monstrous convict visitee was still across the glass, watching as the two guards rolled Harwood onto a stretcher. I saw the convict lean over for a closer look, his eyes a mix of fear and concern.

Then, for the span of a heartbeat, I saw him smile.

We pulled away from the prison. Harwood had been taken to the infirmary. When we’d gone a couple miles, I climbed in the back seat, lay down with my hands behind my head. Harry and I had traveled this way often, him driving, me reclining in back. When I was a child and my father’s psychotic angers would infest his brain, I slipped from the house and hid in the back seat of our station wagon. A back seat felt secure to this day. It wasn’t the officially sanctioned method of travel, thus we limited it to backroads and anonymous highways.

“Harwood exploded like a volcano?” Harry asked the rearview mirror. “Think it has anything to do with our case?”

I thought a moment. “He was a smug smart-ass, a gamester,” I said to the back of Harry’s square head. “Probably didn’t make a lot of friends. Could have been payback.”

“Or just some bad prune-o,” Harry said, referring to an alcoholic concoction brewed up in prisons everywhere. “What’d he say about Taneesha?”

“He was being a funny boy, but when I mentioned her murder it was like throwing ice water in his face. He serioused up a bit, said she was naive and didn’t know how the world worked. And that he was going to be set up when he got out. He wasn’t going to be a day laborer anymore.”

“Set up? Like being taken care of financially?”

I said, “That’s what I took it to mean.”

“So Harwood thought Taneesha didn’t know how the world worked?”

“We’ve met a hundred guys like Harwood, Harry, how do all of them think the world works?”

Harry thought a moment. Looked in the rear view.

“You got enough money, you do what you want. When you want. To whoever you want.”

“That about sums it up,” I said.

CHAPTER 10

To Lucas it looked like any deserted warehouse near the State Docks: brown brick, busted windows with boards behind them, shattered glass on the sidewalk. There was a single door in front, rippled steel painted green, the kind of closure that retracted upward. A loading dock was to the side of the building, strewn with crumbling pallets. He could smell the river in the distance.

Lucas took a seat on a short wall a quarter block away, dropped shoplifted sunglasses over his eyes, and watched as twilight settled in. Friday night would be a good night, Lucas figured. If, that is, the name his five hundred dollars bought wasn’t bogus. If he’d been lied to by the guy, he’d go back to that bar and cut the obese bastard’s lying throat – what was his name? Leroy Dinkins? – slice Leroy’s fat throat open like a –

“Clouds, Lucas. Concentrate on the clouds.”

Lucas heard the words in his head and closed his eyes. He replaced the violent thoughts with pictures of clouds. White and puffy and gentle. Clouds from earth to sky.

“Float on the clouds, Lucas,” he heard Dr Rudolnick intone in a hypnotist’s voice, deep and soothing. “Float like a boat on a calm pond. Breathe away the anger as you float. Out goes a breath, out goes anger…Let it flow out like water.”

Lucas listened to Dr Rudolnick for two minutes, breathing deeply and floating on the clouds. When his eyes opened, he felt calm and refreshed.

He resumed watching the warehouse. The street was one-way. Semis drove by with containerized cargo racked on trailers. It was almost twilight before the first car arrived, a Corvette as white as snow. The second, a half-hour later, was a black Benz. Forty-five minutes passed before the third car rolled into view, a silvery T-bird, a classic. The green door swallowed them whole and quickly.

I bought the right name, Lucas thought, slapping his knee in delight. I invested well. He stood and ambled to the warehouse. Stars were beginning to poke through a darkening sky. He walked past the door to the corner of the building, leaned against it and waited.

Twenty minutes later he heard a vehicle enter from a block down, headlights shining across the deserted street. The car stopped and Lucas figured the driver was phoning inside the warehouse. Seconds later, he heard a whining electric motor and the sound of the door ratcheting open.

He stepped around the corner and saw the taillights of a gold Lexus disappearing inside the warehouse, the door dropping like a portcullis. Lucas sprinted to the door and rolled inside the warehouse.

A dozen vehicles sat in the wide space, several little more than automotive skeletons. The burp of pneumatic tools punctured air smelling of petroleum and cigarettes. A short man, bald, his outsized arms blue with tattoos, jumped from the Lexus, eyes widening when he saw Lucas.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Lucas stood and brushed himself off. “I’m looking for Danny or Darryl Hooley. They around?”

The guy yelled, “Intruder!”

In seconds Lucas was surrounded by three men in grease-stained denim, two holding tools, the third pointing a black pistol at Lucas’s midsection. The men muttered among themselves as Lucas stood with his hands held innocently out to his sides.

“Who is he?”

“Guy rolled under the door.”

“Somebody get Danny.”

“He’s coming.”

A trim, thirtyish man appeared from the rear of the building, pencil tucked behind one ear, cigarette above the other. Red hair flowed from his head. He wore a blue work shirt tucked into denim jeans. A few steps behind him was a younger and skinnier version of the same man, hippie-long hair ponytailed with a blue bandana. His T-shirt touted one of the Dave Matthews Band tours.

“What do we have here?” the older man asked, raising an eyebrow at Lucas.

“It’s a bum,” one of the grease monkeys said. “I think.”

The man with the weapon said, “He said he was looking for the Hooley brothers.”

The older man slipped the cigarette from behind his ear, lipped it, lit it with a chrome Zippo. He blew a smoke stream to the side, his eyes never leaving Lucas.

“What do you want to talk to them about?” he said. “The Hooley brothers?”

Lucas smiled, crossed his arms, returned the man’s gaze evenly.

“I want to schedule a presentation,” he said.

CHAPTER 11

Saturday arrived, the day of Dani’s Channel 14 bash. The Franklin case had overridden the mental circuitry I use for day-to-day transactions, and I’d neglected to rent a tuxedo. I was out gathering materials to build a storage rack for my kayak when I had the memory-jogging fortune to pass a formal wear shop by the University of South Alabama. I know tuxedos as well as I know theoretical physics, and had let a young, spike-haired clerk prescribe one for me.

“Nothing old and stuffy,” I instructed, remembering this was a big deal to Dani. “Something classy and contemporary.”

At five, I put on the leased tux and headed to Dani’s, pulling stoplight stares on the way, a guy in evening wear piloting an eight-year-old pickup painted gray with a roller.

Dani lived at the edge of the Oakleigh Garden District, stately homes from the 1800s. It was a lovely old home and Dani had lined the walk and fronting trees with flowers. A white limo sat at the curb of her modest two-story, the driver leaning back in his seat and reading the Daily Form. I parked ahead of the limo, walked the tree-shaded and flower-bordered walkway to her door, knocked, let myself in. Her living room was bright and high-ceilinged, with an iron fireplace at one end and a red leather grouping of couch and chairs at the other. A scarlet carpet bridged the distance. It was cool inside and smelled of the potions women use for bathing.

“Dani?”

She entered from the dining room. Her gown was a rush of red from shoulders to ankles, sleek and satiny and melded to her slender form.

“Helluva dress.” I grinned and slid my palms over her derriere.

“Whoa,” she said, grabbing my hands and stepping away. “Gotta keep the wrinkles out, at least for a while.”

“Of course,” I said. “Sorry.”

She had a chance to take in my rakish evening garb. I expected delight, instead received a frown.

“Where did you get that thing?”

“Tuxedo Junction. By the university. Très chic, no?”

“It looks like something Wyatt Earp wore.”

I patted the crushed-velvet lapel. “The kid at the store said it’s a western cut. Very popular.”

Dani closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Popular at high school proms, Carson. Not adult events.”

I felt my face redden. “I didn’t know. Maybe there’s enough time to –”

“It’s all right,” she said, looking away. “It’ll be fine.”

“What’s with the limo outside?” I asked, happy to change the subject.

She ran to the window. “Do you think it’s for me? Could you check?”

The driver had been instructed to wait until a DeeDee Danbury was leaving, intercept her, and bring her via the white whale, not taking no for an answer.

“They’s a cold bottle of champagne in the back, suh,” he added. “Glasses in that box at the side. Cheeses and shrimps in the cooler.”

I fetched Dani. The driver opened the door with a flourish and drove off as smoothly as if on a monorail. I poured champagne and assembled plates of shrimp and cheese. Outside, Mobile slipped past and nearby vehicle occupants wrinkled their foreheads trying to peer through the mirror-black windows of the limo.

“Check it out, Carson,” Dani said, gesturing at the faces with her champagne glass. “They look like monkeys.”

The Channel 14 event was at the Shrine Temple, a high-ceilinged, marble-floored exemplar of baroque excess. Our driver pulled up front, jumped out to open the door. I think he bowed. We stepped into the path of Jenna Doakes, a weekend news anchor my girlfriend dubbed “Prissy Missy High’n’Mighty”.

Doakes regarded the departing limo with a raised eyebrow.

“Isn’t that a little Hollywood, DeeDee?”

Dani said, “You didn’t get one?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The station sent it for me,” Dani explained.

Doakes’s grin melted into confusion, then fear. She hustled away on the arm of her escort, shooting over-the-shoulder glances at Dani, like she was twelve feet tall and glowing.

The soirée was in the ballroom, entered via a dozen marble steps sweeping to the floor, spotlit top and bottom. The only thing lacking was the monocled guy announcing the arrivals.

We descended to the milling crowd. Soft light fell from above, a sprawling chandelier resembling a wedding cake iced with glass. The edges of the cavernous room were columned every dozen feet, walls of dark velvet. Forty board feet of food waited at the rear: carved roasts of beef, glazed hams, shrimp, crab cakes, cheeses, breads, sweets. A fountain dribbled minted punch. Three ice sculptures rose above the food: two swans and a four-foot-tall Channel 14 logo.

Three bars were at the edges of the room, black-vested barkeeps already pouring fast to manage demand. On the stage, a ten-piece band tuned up.

The round tables were filling fast with employees and clients and guests. I saw a vacant table near the stage. I couldn’t figure out why it was empty until close enough to see a tabletop placard announcing, RESERVED. We took a table with staffers from the station. Unfortunately, I was the only attendee in a gunslinger tuxedo.

The band kicked in and we launched into the mingle portion of the program, Dani moving like a dervish, barking “Hey-yas” and “How-de-dos” and spinning from one clot of revelers to the next. I finally got to meet the news director she adored, a shambling, fiftyish guy named Laurel Hollings. Hollings had missed a button on his shirt, mumbled when he spoke. He kept checking his phone, maybe hoping some major catastrophe might pull him from the event. I liked Hollings from the git-go, even more when he expressed admiration for my tuxedo, saying he wished he “had the balls to wear something like that”.

Dani talked shop with reporters, discussed industry trends with home-office types, schmoozed station clients – car dealers, realtors, mobile-home manufacturers, supermarket owners – with either modest propriety or bawdy wit, depending on the client. After a half-hour, she called for a minute off her feet.

The closest chairs were at the still-empty RESERVED table. I set my beer on the white tablecloth and took a seat, gnawing a roll while she slipped off her shoes and squeezed her toes, cursing the inventor of high heels.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a voice at my back and a finger tap on my shoulder. I swiveled to a pout-mouthed man wearing a bow tie, purple vest, and a name card announcing EVENT MANAGER.

I set my roll on the table, picked up my drink. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, but this table’s waiting for someone.” He pointed to the RESERVED card. I saw his glance take in crumbs of roll on the tabletop and a damp circle from my drink.

“The lady’s resting her feet. If the table’s owners arrive, we’ll move.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, ice on his vocal cords. “No one can sit here.”

“I hate to disagree with you, sport …” I said, about to point out we were already sitting. Dani heard my voice shift to the one I use for supercilious assholes. Her fingers tapped my wrist.

“Don’t be that way, Carson. There’s a table across the way. Follow me.”

We moved, EVENT MANAGER signaled for the bus staff to change the RESERVED tablecloth, like I’d left some kind of stink on the table.

The band stuttered to a halt in the middle of a rhythmically challenged “Smoke on the Water”, launching into “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here”. Heads swung to the door. A party of three men and three women gathered atop the marble steps as two photographers raced to shoot pictures. Behind this nucleus were several other men and women.

Forefront in the vanguard group was a tall, fortyish man with an older woman on his arm. She was the one person in the group who didn’t look direct from a Vogue eveningwear issue: white-haired, plank-faced, pale, eyes as dark as coal. A large woman, she wasn’t obese, but sturdy, a prize Holstein in a designer toga.

The tall man escorted her to the unoccupied table as pout-mouth whisked away the RESERVED placard. Only after she had sat and nodded did the others take seats.

I chuckled at the spectacle. “Looks like Buckingham Palace let out.”

“It’s the Kincannons, Carson. Surely you’ve heard of them.”

It struck a chord. “There’s a big plaque at the Police Academy that mentions a Kincannon something or other. Maybe a couple huge plaques. A program?”

“A grant, I imagine. The family is big on grants and donations and endowments.”

I studied the tall man: well-constructed, his tuxedo modeled to a wide-shouldered, waist-slender frame. His face was lengthy and rectangular; had he wished to ship the face somewhere for repairs, it would have been neatly contained in a shoe box. Judging by the admiring glances of nearby women, however, it was a face needing neither repair nor revision. He seemed well aware of this fact, not standing so much as striking a series of poses: holding his chin as he talked, crossing his arms and canting his head, arching a dark eyebrow while massaging a colleague’s shoulder. He looked like an actor playing a successful businessman.

“Who’s the pretty guy working the Stanislavski method?” I asked. “Seems like I’ve seen him before.”

A pause. “That’s Buck Kincannon, Junior, Carson. Sort of the scion of the family.”

“How are scions employed these days?” I asked. “At least this scion?”

“The man collects cars and art and antiques. Sails yachts. Breeds prize cattle.”

“Good work if you can get it,” I noted.

“He also runs the family’s investments. The Kincannons have more money than Croesus. Buck keeps the pile growing.”

The funds would be fine if they grew as fast as the throng gathering to acknowledge the late arrivals, I thought. An overturned beer truck wouldn’t have pulled a crowd faster. Several notables hustled over: an appellate judge, two state representatives, half the city council.

“What’s the connection to the station?” I asked.

“The family’s one of the major investors in Clarity, part of the ownership consortium. Buck Kincannon’s my boss, Carson. Way up the ladder, but the guy who makes the big decisions.”

Clarity Broadcasting owned Channel 14 and a few dozen other TV and radio outlets, primarily in the South, but according to newspaper accounts they were pushing hard toward a national presence.

“Who’s the older woman?” I asked.

Dani’s voice subconsciously dropped to a whisper. “Maylene Kincannon. Queen Maylene, some people call her. But only from a distance. Like another continent. Buck’s the oldest of her kids, forty-one. Beside Buck is Racine Kincannon and his wife Lindy; Racine’s thirty-eight or so. The guy closest to Mama is Nelson Kincannon, thirty-four, I think.”

“Who are the others with them?”

“Congressman Whitfield to the right, beside him is Bertram Waddley, CEO of the biggest bank in the state, next to Waddley is –”

I held up my hand. “I get the picture.”

I turned from the hangers-on and scanned the brothers: Buck, Racine, Nelson. Though the angular faces weren’t feminine, the men seemed almost gorgeous, their eyes liquid and alert, their gestures practiced and fluid.

My eyes fell on the matriarch, lingered. Though her skin was pale and her hair was snow, nothing about her said frail. She looked like she could have wrestled Harry to a draw.

“What happened to Papa Kincannon?” I asked.

“Buck Senior? I haven’t heard much about him. He has some form of mental ailment, early onset Alzheimer’s or something similar, a disease of the brain. He’s alive, but has been out of the picture for years.”

“He started the fortune?”

“He had a mind for business. An instinct or whatever.”

“You know a lot about the family, Dani.”

She looked away. “I’m a reporter and they’re a major investor in my company.”

“Where’s Kincannon’s wife?”

“He’s single. Divorced years ago.”

“Have you ever met him?”

Dani studied her wineglass, drained it. “I met him at a charity event eighteen months back.”

“You talked to him since?”

She passed me her glass. “Could you get me another, please? While I climb back into these shoes.”

Rather than cross the center of the room, where I might re-meet someone I’d already forgotten, I moved to the shadowed edges and circled toward the nearest bar. My path took me behind the Clan Kincannon. The Buckster was still working the receiving line, his hand squeezed by men, cheeks pecked by women.

Mama Maylene was another matter: it seemed forbidden to touch her, and even the most hand-grabbing, hug-enwrapping, cheek-kissing folks stopped short of Mama, offering a few brief words before quickly slipping past.

When not engaged in long-distance greetings, Maylene Kincannon raked the crowd with emotionless eyes, black as cinders in the whiteness of her face. I watched in fascination as they gathered full measure of the room, every face, every gesture, every contact.

Perhaps she felt my gaze, for her eyes swung to mine. For a moment we stared at one another, until her eyes moved away, restless, scanning. I had the feeling of having been surveyed by a machine, deemed of zero value, dismissed.

There was a crowd at the bar and I got in one of the lines. My position faced me down a service hall to a kitchen door. Surprisingly – and delightfully – a woman’s derriere backed from the kitchen, wiggling as it retreated. The owner followed, throwing air kisses and whispering thanks. I suspected she was a late arrival not wishing to enter via the cascading steps and glare of lights.

I put her age in the early thirties, slender where she needed to be, ample where she didn’t, big lavender eyes augmented with too much shadow, perhaps trying to balance a succulent, lipstick-ad mouth. Her dress was cobalt blue, strapless, anchored by gravity-defying breasts whose origin was dubious.

“Whatcha need, sir?” the barkeep asked.

I reluctantly turned from the woman. “Tall bourbon and soda, light on the bourbon, and a white wine.”

“We have three whites tonight, sir. A Belden Farms Chardonnay, a B & G Vouvray, and a Chenin Blanc by Isenger.”

I knew wine as well as I knew Mandarin. I said uh several times.

“Go for the Vouvray, Slim,” a woman’s voice said. “The others are horse piss.”

I turned. The woman in cobalt leaned against the column at the end of the bar, a few feet distant. She winked. “Grab me a drink while you’re there, wouldya? Double scotch.” Her voice was a purr of command, cigarette husky, a voice with more years on it than the woman.

I turned, three drinks in hand. She snatched hers and spun away. I watched her circle behind the crowd, pause against another column, study the surroundings. She belted the scotch. Then she snapped her wrist twice, like flicking paint from a brush. She thought a moment, then repeated the odd motion, more exaggerated this time, like cracking a whip.

She flipped the empty glass into a trash can, snapped on a bright smile, and headed into the crowded room. My eyes kept following her derriere, but the room went dark.

Lucas arrived a half-hour after the Channel 14 soirée had started, parking outside the Shrine Temple, slipping the used Subaru into the anonymous dark between street lamps. He had been eating granola, spitting stale raisins out the window into the street. It had irritated him that a fucking health-food store would sell granola with stale raisins and he’d considered returning to the store, grabbing the slacker clerk by his Bruce Cockburn T-shirt, dragging him down here and making the bastard lick the raisins from the pavement.

“Those taste fresh to you? You little cocksucking son of a …”

He had caught himself. Taken several deep breaths, cleansing breaths. Listened to Dr Rudolnick conjure up clouds.

“Settle into the clouds, Lucas. Let your anger drift away …”

Nothing much had happened while he waited; not that he’d expected anything. But he’d read about this soirée in a newspaper column and decided to rub elbows with the swells, even if it was a distant rubbing.

Sometimes things were revealed in small motions. Like the black stretch limo parked in the lot down the block, engine idling, keeping the air conditioning at a precise seventy-eight degrees. Lucas had wanted to knock on the door of the limo, engage the driver in conversation. Maybe leave a warm ass-print in the leather seat, like a dog spraying its territory.

Common sense had prevailed. It wasn’t yet time to prod the Kincannons.

After he’d been sitting for several more minutes, calm again, a woman slipped from the doors of the Temple, a sexy woman in a blue dress, large breasts bobbing as she high-heeled down the sidewalk. She was weaving a bit, a sheet or two to the wind. She laughed, flicked her hand in the air in a strange and sudden motion, like a drummer tapping a cymbal. Then she hawked and spat onto the sidewalk, lit a cigarette, and crossed the street to climb into a battered red Corolla. It took two minutes of grinding the ignition before the engine kicked over and the car rattled away trailing a plume of blue exhaust.

The woman was suddenly more interesting to Lucas than a building he couldn’t safely enter, and his curiosity made him follow her, just for a lark.

CHAPTER 12

As I crossed the ballroom in the dark, a drink in each hand, the podium turned white with spotlight, signaling the business side of the affair. I returned to the table as the general manager took the dais. He droned industry jargon for twenty minutes: ratings points, targeted growth analysis, revenue streams, optimized asset utilization, and so forth. He was followed by three heads of something-or-other. Finally the GM reclaimed the microphone, burbled a few more comments, then swept his hand toward the Kincannon suburb.

“…cornerstones of our station and community, ladies and gentlemen, the Kincannons…”

The family members smiled and waved. Buck Kincannon elevated from his seat. A balcony spotlight centered him, and I figured it had been aimed beforehand. The crowd applauded Kincannon like it had applauded everyone, solid, polite; then, after a few seconds, started to wane.

A voice yelled, “Speech.”

Several men at a front table stood, hands clapping, calling for words from Kincannon. Folks at adjoining tables followed, checking side to side as they rose, concert-goers uncertain whether the music was that good, but everyone else seems to think so. Applause thundered from the front table. They reminded me of cheerleaders in tuxedos. Or, less politely, shills.

Dani stood and pounded her palms together. Kincannon took the dais with a laugh line, apologizing for disturbing “everyone’s reason for being here: free food and drinks”, then segued into more business-speak. To my untrained ear, it seemed fifty per cent jargon, fifty per cent bullshit; the trick, perhaps, to discern which was which. Or perhaps it didn’t matter.

After several minutes, Kincannon reverted to English.

“…nowhere is professionalism more evident than in the news department. No news team won more awards in Alabama last year than Channel 14 Action News…”

Applause from the audience at large.

“We’ve heard from some of those fine folks this evening, but there’s someone else needs to say a few words. I’m talking about the hard-charging investigative spark of the team…”

“I didn’t expect this,” Dani said, touching at her hair. “How do I look, Carson?”

“Like you. Only dressier.”

“…gives me great pleasure to introduce a present star and future superstar of Clarity Broadcasting Network, a woman with more in her future than she knows…”

Dani grinned, shook her head.

“…I give you DeeDee Danbury…”

Kincannon lifted his arms wide, the Pope blessing St Peter’s Square.

“Come on up, DeeDee.”

Applause rang out as Dani jogged to the dais. Buck Kincannon extended his arms and she walked into them, his wide hand rubbing her bare back. They traded smiles and a few words and Dani stepped to the microphone as Kincannon moved back a step, but still in her light.

She cleared her throat and mimed opening an envelope, blowing into it, reaching inside. The crowd went silent, wondering what she was doing.

Dani plucked an invisible card from the invisible envelope, held it distant as if to better see the words.

“And the winner in the category of best employer is…Clarity Broadcasting Network!”

The crowd laughed, applauded, whistled. I clapped as well, fighting the notion that I’d seen her pander to the audience, to her employer. I felt embarrassment, but didn’t know for whom. Then I realized I was as naïve to the ways of broadcasting as I was to the rental of formal wear. This is what they must do at these bashes, I thought. Kiss ass and march in rhythm. Relax.

Dani’s speech took two minutes. It was humorous. Smooth. Rich in praise to Clarity Broadcasting and the Kincannon family. And, like her allusion to the Academy Awards, seemed more act than sincerity.

Kincannon grabbed the mike, yelled, “Let’s hear it for our own beautiful DeeDee Danbury!” He waved his hands in a Bring it on motion. Again led by the group at the front table, the audience jumped to its feet as if Dani were a figure skater who’d just completed a quintuple something-or-other.

The soirée broke up at eleven. Since Dani’s effusive blessing by ownership, she’d been surrounded by sudden friends. Outside, I waited as she chatted with others, enjoying the limelight. With little to do, I wandered in the warm night. I stepped around the corner and saw Racine and Nelson Kincannon and their wives waiting for transportation. It was a service entrance and I figured people like the Kincannons didn’t queue with the riff-raff.

I leaned against a lamp a hundred feet distant and watched, just me and the Kincannons. No one in the family spoke to anyone else, their eyes flat and expressionless. It was like the show was over, everyone could turn off their faces and go home. Racine Kincannon was drinking, carrying glasses in both hands.

Nelson said something. I couldn’t hear what. Racine spun, threw one of the drinks in his brother’s face. Racine threw the other drink on the ground, grabbed his brother’s lapels, pushed him away hard. The wives stepped a dozen feet away and looked into the night sky, bored. The two men seemed about to square off when I heard a voice like broken glass.

“Stop it, now!”

Maylene Kincannon exploded from the building like a rodeo bull from a gate, Buck Kincannon at her side. She thundered up, finger jabbing, tongue lashing. I heard the anger, but not the words. Her two squabbling sons looked at their feet. The wives remained turned away, like nothing was happening.

Then Buck Kincannon leaned toward his mother, said something. Whatever it was didn’t agree with her. She slapped his face so hard it sounded like a gunshot. No one else seemed to notice or care.

A black stretch limo rolled into view. The family grouped together as the chauffeur emerged to open the doors. The black beast pulled from the curb. I saw an impenetrably dark window roll down. A male face, contorted in anger, yelled, “Get a life, asshole.”

The curtain fell.

It was almost midnight when our driver returned us to Dani’s, the night drenched with haze and lit by moon glow, the air perfumed with dogwood and magnolia. Arms linked, we walked to the porch as a night bird sang from the eaves. She shook her keys free of her purse, opened the door. The cool, clean air felt good after sharing the exhalations of three hundred others for two hours. I looked at her phone, a red LED blinking.

“You’ve got a message.”

She went to the kitchen to rattle the lock at the back door, the habitual checks of a woman living alone. “Probably Laurel Hollings twitting me for the speech. He does that kind of thing when he’s had a few. Punch it on while I look out back.”

I heard the kitchen door open, the screen slam, as she went out to check the back porch door. I tossed my jacket into a chair, walked to the phone, pressed Message.

“It was great to see you this evening, dear DeeDee. I meant everything I said about the bright future. And by the way, that red dress was fantastic. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Four hours earlier I wouldn’t have recognized the voice. But now I did.

Buck Kincannon.

I closed my eyes and wondered what to do, then diddled with the reset button on the phone. Dani returned a minute later. I stood in front of the hall mirror, fiddling with the button on the vest.

“Crap,” I snarled.

“What?”

“The button’s snagged. Wrapped in a thread.”

She looked at the phone, the display blinking like it had never been touched.

“You didn’t check the phone?” she asked.

I glared at the button. “If I tear the damn button off they’ll probably charge me thirty bucks. There still scissors in the bathroom?”

She nodded and I hustled to the john, closed the door. I stood in the dark with my racing heart as she checked her message. My straining ears caught Buck Kincannon’s voice again roaming through Dani’s house.

It was a business call, I told myself; Buck Kincannon was the capo di tutti capo of the Kincannon family and Clarity Broadcasting. He probably called all the station’s speechgivers, made them feel part of the team. It was just business.

I returned a couple minutes later, vest in hand. Dani was in the kitchen moving dishes from the dishwasher to her shelves.

“Can’t that wait until tomorrow?” I asked.

She shrugged; put on a smile. “Just felt like doing something. Excess energy or whatever.”

“The message, was it your jokester from the station?”

Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine; she turned and slid a dish into place, spoke into the cupboard. “Nothing important. A friend wanting to talk when I have a chance.”

That night we lay in her bed, but neither made motions toward making love. Lightning flashed at the windows and filled the room with shadows, but rain never came. Just past dawn I arose without waking her, penciled a note explaining I had a busy day, and fled into a day already breathless with heat.

CHAPTER 13

Harry shoved aside a file of forms on his desktop, set a new stack in its place. He paused and stared at me.

“You all right, Cars?”

“Sure, Harry. Why?”

“You’ve said maybe three words since you got in this morning. How was the big kick-up for Channel 14? Dancing and prancing with the swells? That was this weekend, right?”

“It was fine.”

I realized if I didn’t go into detail, Harry’s antennae would register my distress. I gave a brief synopsis of the evening: impaired music, great eats, first-class beverages, lots of chatter in biz-speak.

“Plus I even got a look at upper-crust Mobile: a family called the Kincannons. They were so –”

Harry broke into my recitation. “You meet Buck?”

I stared at my partner like a plumed hat had appeared on his head.

“What?”

“Buck Kincannon. You get a chance to say hi?”

“How the hell do you know Buck Kincannon?”

“Back four or five years ago I was working with a civic group in north Mobile, by Pritchard. Maybe you remember?”

“I recall a couple months when all your nights seemed locked up. Weekends, too. Something about a ball league?”

He nodded. “The group’s big push was getting inner-city kids into sports, baseball. Kids from ten to fourteen years old. Keep ’em on a ball field, not the streets. We were beating our heads against the wall, scratching up third-hand equipment. We’d been trying to get the city to let us use an abandoned lot as a practice field, but they kept whining about liability. Mardy Baker, the director of a social services organization, sent letters to all the big civic and charitable organizations, trying to scratch up money. No go.”

“Where’d Kincannon fit in?”

“One of the letters had gone to the Kincannons’ family foundation. A philanthropic deal. Kincannon himself showed up at our next meeting, checkbook in hand.”

“Keep going.”

“Suddenly our ragtag kids got Louisville Slugger bats, Rawlings gloves, uniforms. It wasn’t just money, it was influence. Like he walked into City Hall with a shopping list and said, ‘Here’s what I want.’ Two days later all permits are in order, insurance isn’t a problem, nothing’s a problem. The old field got re-sodded, sand and dirt trucked in to fill the baselines, build a pitcher’s mound. Stands went up so parents could sit and cheer for the kids.”

“So you sat around while Kincannon waved a magic wand?”

“The group was moms mainly, plus a couple of community-activist types. They made me designated hitter for dealing with Buck, me being a big, important cop and all. We went to lunch, him laying out plans, me nodding and going, ‘Sure, Buck, sounds good.’”

“What’d you think of him – Kincannon?” I sounded casual.

Harry flipped a thumbs-up. “From setting the city straight to setting the timetable, he took over. You don’t think of people with that kind of power and influence getting down in the gritty, and he’s cool in my book.”

I stopped listening, put my head on nod-and-grunt function as Harry continued enumerating the angelic feats of the Holy Buckster.

“ …opened that field and you should have seen the kids’ eyes. Buck later said it was one of the highlights of his …”

Nod. Grunt. Nod. Grunt.

“ …all the local politicos showed up like it was their idea, standing next to Buck and getting their pictures taken …”

Nod. Grunt.

“ …guess you can do anything, you got the money to do it.”

I was between grunt and nod when I remembered I wanted to call Warden Malone up at Holman and get a status report on Leland Harwood. I headed toward the small conference room to get some quiet, but Harry followed, still singing the glories of Buck Kincannon.

“Good-looking fella, too. Probably has to shovel the ladies out the door in the a.m …”

We went to the small conference room. I dialed the prison, ran the call through the teleconference device, a black plastic starfish in the center of the round table. Malone was on a minute later.

“Leland Harwood died two hours after he was stricken in the visitors’ room. Never regained consciousness.”

“Poison?” I said.

“A witch’s brew of toxins. Organophosphates, the report says. I’d never heard the term. Pesticide, herbicide, some industrial chemicals.” I heard paper rattling in Warden Malone’s hand as he read from the page.

“Where did all that stuff come from?” Harry asked.

“All available inside, Detective,” Malone said. “Cleaning supplies, rat poison, roach paste, paint thinner. They’re kept tucked away, but …”

“So someone squirted a bunch of stuff on Harwood’s scrambled eggs and he drops dead later?”

“The docs say it took some mixing of compounds to get the right effect, the maximum bang for the buck, to be crass.”

“Harwood got banged hard,” I noted. “He have any enemies?”

“I’ve checked around and the answer is, not really. He was a smart-ass, but managed to stay out of major confrontations. Wanting to appear angelic for the parole board will do that.”

“Got any poisoners up there?” Harry asked.

“Several. But we keep them real far from the pantry, so to speak. The docs said anyone with access to the right supplies could have mixed the brew …with a little help from someone with bad thoughts, the right formula, and high school chemistry.”

“Info that could have come from outside.”

Malone laughed without humor. “Imagine a couple guys in the visitors’ room. The one on the outside says, ‘Soak twenty roach tablets in alcohol, let it sit two days, mix in …’”

“Got the point,” Harry said.

We asked Malone to keep us in the loop. Harry clicked the starfish off. He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“The next time I decide to race Logan to a scene, how about you strangle me.”

“I was just thinking that. Where from here?”

“Let’s check into Harwood some more, call up the man’s sheet. Talk to folks that knew the deceased. Maybe figure out Taneesha Franklin’s interest in a guy like Leland.”

I sat at the computer, pulled up overviews on the incident as Harry leaned over my shoulder, reading ahead.

“Bernard Rudolnick was Harwood’s victim,” Harry said, frowning at the computer screen. “Dr Bernard Rudolnick.”

“Killed in a bar, right?” I scrolled the screen to the correct info as Harry recited particulars.

“The Citadel Tavern. A low-life joint. Got into a scuffle at the bar, the men went outside. A gun goes bang in the night. The shooter lit out, but Mobile’s finest grabbed Harwood a few hours later.”

I studied the screen. “Doctor? Like in M.D.?”

“Psychiatrist,” Harry said. “Bet they didn’t get a lot of shrinks at the Citadel. A pity the one they had didn’t last the night.”

Time for me to pick up the prelim from Taneesha Franklin’s autopsy. I took the stairs, looked into the second floor, and saw Sally Hargreaves sitting at her desk, staring blank-eyed at the wall. Sally was a detective handling sexual crimes, a tough gig on the best days. I continued down the flight, realized Sally wasn’t the wall-staring type. I climbed back up, went to her desk.

“What’s up, Sal? You look like your cat got sucked into the vacuum cleaner.”

She turned, brightened. Pushed strands of auburn hair from her eyes. Smiled with false bonhomie.

“Hi, Carson.”

“You OK?”

She looked at a report she’d been filling out. Shook her head.

“I just got back from the hospital. A rape victim. Among other things. Jesus.”

“Tough one?”

“Ugliness through and through. Bizarre.”

I rolled up a chair for the vacant desk beside Sal’s. The desk had belonged to her former partner, Larry Dayle. Dayle had resigned after four months on the Sex Crimes unit, moving his family to a mountainside in Montana and stringing the perimeter with razor wire.

The floor – Sexual Crimes, Crimes Against Property, Vehicle Theft – was quiet, most of the detectives out. I took Sal’s hand.

“Want to tell a friendly face about it? I can go get Harry.”

She laughed, and the laugh cracked into a sob. She caught herself. Brushed away a tear. It was Sal’s empathy that made her so good at what she did. The downside was what poured back through the door.

She said, “A woman, twenty-five. Student. Got grabbed off the street just after dark last night. Picked up bodily and jammed into a vehicle. She was taken somewhere – a barn or stable, she thought, by the smell. Afterwards she got pushed from a moving vehicle into a hospital parking lot. That was one a.m. this morning. I was with her most of the night.”

“Strange. She was raped?”

“And beaten. Her face …it’ll be a long time before the surgeons make it a face again. She wanted children. That’s gone. Her insides were …”

“Easy,” I said.

“The guy who did it, while he was punching her, doing all the things he did, he kept laughing, yelling, ‘Look at me, bitch, can you see me?’ Then he’d hit her, scream, ‘Look at me, tell me what you see.’”

“She got a description?” I asked.

“No.”

“The perp wore a mask?”

Sally shook her head. “No.”

“What?” I asked.

Sally buried her face in her hands.

“Oh, Carson. She’s blind. Been blind since birth.”

I thought about the rape-abduction as I drove to the morgue. I’d never worked sex crimes, though as a member of the Psychopathological and Sociopathological unit had studied sexual predators. The actions as Sal described them seemed to combine the power-assertive, or entitlement, type of offender with a sadistic, or anger-excitation, type of behavior. The first behavior type humiliates the victim to increase the perp’s sense of self-worth and self-confidence. The second is brutal, often involving a high level of physical aggression, including torture.

I had no idea what to make of the anomalous gesture of dropping the woman at the hospital.

The Crown Vic started to feel crowded and I lowered the windows to let fresh air blow out too many dark thoughts. I parked in the morgue lot beside Clair’s sporty little BMW, worth more than my annual pay. Clair’s former husband, Zane Peltier, was a bona fide member of Mobile society, the old-money contingent, and some of that largesse had rubbed off on Clair during the divorce proceedings.

It hit me that Clair would certainly know of the Kincannons, maybe even know them personally. I might get a question answered, maybe two, if I could sneak them into a conversation.

Clair wasn’t in her office, so I checked across the hall in the main autopsy suite. She was gowned in green and standing against the wall as Lula Baker mopped the floor beneath the autopsy table. Lula was a former housekeeper in New Orleans, one of the vast army of transplants.

“Hi, Lula,” I said.

“Morn’, ’tect Ryd’,” she said. Lula was thirty or so, white, skinny, and had the ability to edit most words to a single syllable.

“The prelim’s out front, Ryder,” Clair said, looking up from a copy of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Monthly, required reading for pathologists.

“I wanted to ask you something else.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “I forgot.”

Clair pulled off her reading glasses, studied me with the big blue miracles.

“Maybe because you’re not getting enough sleep. You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”

“It’s the Franklin case. Nothing’s moving ahead.”

“Take vitamins and eat right. Remember to sleep.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

She frowned, but said nothing. I turned to leave, then tapped my forehead, like I’d been hit with a sudden thought.

“I was at a Channel 14 party the other night, Clair. Formal, all the bigwigs. I half-expected to see you there with the social types.”

“If I never see another champagne fountain it’ll be too soon. Out of your element, weren’t you?”

“If I never see another tux it’ll be too soon. You wouldn’t know a family named Kincannon, would you?”

Her face darkened. “Why?”

“People treated them like royalty. I’ve never seen so much bowing and scraping.”

Clair turned to the housekeeper. “That’s fine, Lula. You can go.”

“Be bact’mar.”

Lula rolled the mop and bucket out the door. Clair set the CDC report on a counter.

“The Kincannons have money, Carson. It equates to power: lots of money, lots of power. Some people have an automatic reflex when they get near power. Their knees bend.”

“A lot of politicos were there, too.”

“Political knees bend further and more often. She was there, too, wasn’t she: an older woman, white hair, chunky, aloof?”

“Yes. May-bell-line?”

“Maylene. Yes, she would have been. She’ll always be there, in some way or another.”

I heard something off-key in Clair’s voice, anger maybe, or resignation.

“Some way or another?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

She looked at her watch, frowned. “I’ve got two pathologists down with the flu. I’ve got the day’s second post in three minutes. Look, the Kincannons do a lot of giving to the community and the region. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for parks, health-care institutions, schools, law enforcement …an incredible amount of money.”

“And so …?”

“The Kincannons …well, only some of the truly wealthy can give with both hands, Ryder.”

Her words seemed cryptic; Clair was rarely cryptic.

“You mean the Kincannons have so much they can shovel it hand over hand into the community?”

“Think about it. But elsewhere, please. I’ve got to get to work.”

I sucked in a breath, said, “How about Buck Kincannon?”

“Is there a specific question there?”

“No,” I admitted. There are about a hundred.

Clair picked up the phone on the counter, asked for the body to be brought to the table. She turned to me.

“Buck Kincannon is the current golden boy of the family, forty-eight karats of flawless Kincannon breeding. Last month’s Alabama Times magazine listed him as one of the top ten eligible bachelors in the state.”

Not what I needed to hear.

“Current golden boy, Clair?”

“Maylene Kincannon runs that family like a competitive event. Next month it may be Nelson on the pedestal. Or Racine, unless he gets blitzed and slips off. Race likes women and liquor, probably not in that order. Now, unless you’re going to assist, it’s time to skedaddle.”

I nodded, headed for the door. I was stepping into the hall when she called my name. I stopped, turned.

“The Kincannons, Ryder. They haven’t stepped outside any limits, right? You’re not investigating anything, anyone?”

“Just natural curiosity about a lifestyle I’ll never know.”

She gave me the long look again. “It’s mostly fiction. Stay away from those folks, Carson. There’s nothing to be gained there.”

I picked up the report at the front desk, then stepped into a day more like August than June, heat rippling from the asphalt surface of the parking lot.

Stepped outside any limits …

Walking to the car I revisited Clair’s phrase, a curious assemblage of words. And that throw-away line about staying away from the Kincannons …

Was that some kind of warning?

You’re losing it, I thought, slipping behind the wheel. The only warning here is to keep your imagination in check.

CHAPTER 14

Mrs Kayla Rudolnick was the mother of Dr Bernard Rudolnick, Harwood’s victim. A thin woman in her late sixties, she wore a brown pantsuit and pink slippers, holding a cigarette in one hand, a glass ashtray in the other. She’d apologized for having her hair in curlers and led us to a couch with antimacassars on the back. The room smelled of Ben-Gay and nicotine. She switched off the television, a soap opera.

“It was just a phone call. But I recall her saying she was a reporter.”

“Taneesha Franklin?”

Smoke plumed from her nostrils. “The Taneesha is what I remember.”

“What did Ms Franklin want to know?” I asked.

Mrs Rudolnick’s eyes tightened behind a wall of smoke. “I told her to leave me alone. Bernie was gone. Never call me again.”

Mrs Rudolnick plucked a pink tissue from her sleeve, lifted her bifocals and blotted her eyes.

“He was a good man, my son. Brilliant mind, good heart.”

“I’m sure.”

“He had his problems. But we all do, don’t we?”

I shot Harry a glance. We’d come back to that.

“The doctor wasn’t married?” I asked.

“When he was twenty-eight, again when he was thirty-six. Both marriages lasted under two years. He couldn’t pick women, they both cleaned him out like a closet. Two times he started over.”

A photo sat on the table beside me: Rudolnick and Mama maybe a half-decade back, his arms around her from the back. Like his mother, Rudolnick had sad Slavic eyes and a nose-centric face. His hair was black and thinning, brushed straight back. His white shirt was buttoned to the Adam’s apple, the collar starched. He looked like he could have been dropped into the 1950s and no one would have noticed.

Harry and I had hoped a wife might provide insight into Rudolnick’s behavior and patterns. But the good doctor had been five years gone from marriage and lived alone. I said, “So his last wife might not be able to tell us much about his life.”

“Shari? He met her at a bar. You don’t meet decent women at bars. She moved to Seattle four years ago. Probably found herself a new bar and a new Bernie.”

“You mentioned Bernie having some problems, Miz Rudolnick,” Harry said.

She tapped ash into the tray and looked away. “You know, don’t you?”

“No, ma’am, I never met your son.”

“It’s in the records. You didn’t look?”

“I don’t know what records you’re referring to, Miz Rudolnick.”

“The records down where you work.”

I finally made sense of what she was saying. And maybe why she’d been spooked by a reporter.

“Your son was arrested?” I asked. “When?”

She looked away. “Four years ago. He had some problems.”

“Can you explain, please?”

“After Shari left he became depressed. Sometimes – not often – he took things to help him cope, calm down. He was always high-strung.”

“Drugs?”

“He was a doctor. He used it like medicine.”

“Of course.”

“One day he came here. He was crying and I was terrified. He said there was a hospital worker he’d been buying some of his medicine from, and the police had been watching the hospital worker. Bernie was purchasing something. He was sure it would come out in the papers, his career would be over.”

She looked from my face to Harry’s. Though her son was dead, the episode printed fright and humiliation across her face.

“It’s all right, ma’am. We don’t need the full story.”

I figured we’d get it from the arrest report, save the poor woman the retelling.

She said, “He stopped taking those things. What happened with the police finally made him stop.”

“How was his behavior before the end?” I asked. “Normal?”

A grandfather clock in the hall chimed. We waited until it fell silent.

“About a month before…that day, he seemed depressed again. He came over to see me less. He was quieter, like he was deciding on something.”

“Could have been something with his work? Unhappiness?”

She walked to the mother-and-son photo. Touched it with reverence. “He loved his work. He was born to help people get better. He consulted in the region’s best facilities. Bernie was on the board at Mobile Regional Hospital. He had a private practice.”

It was a good place to take our leave, on the high note of her son’s achievements. As we moved to the door, I asked one final question.

“Excuse me, Mrs Rudolnick. Did your son have a specialty?”

She exhaled a plume of smoke, spun a tobacco-stained finger at her temple. “He worked with tormented minds.”

Psychotics? A bell rang in my head. Had Rudolnick known Harwood earlier? I wondered. Did they have a history? What if Harwood had been a patient, or part of a study?

I said, “I don’t suppose he ever mentioned patients by name.”

She crushed the cigarette dead in the ashtray and set it aside. “He was absolute about privacy.”

Harry said, “The records your son kept about his patients. All gone, right?”

“They were in his house and I didn’t know what to do with them. I keep them in storage. I don’t know why.”

“Would it be possible to look at them?”

She held up her hands, waving my words away. “No. It’s all confidential, a bond of trust.”

Harry stepped close. Gathered her hands in his, held them steady. I could never do anything that simple and perfect. “It might be helpful, Miz Rudolnick,” he said quietly. “It would never go further than Carson and me. And it might be our key to finding who killed your son.”

Her eyes shimmered with tears and her mouth pursed tight. “It was that filthy Harwood animal, scum. Piece of dirt…piece of shit.”

“I wish that was true, ma’am. But Leland Harwood was just a tool, a hammer. The man who swung the hammer is still out there.”

She shook her head. “No. It can’t be. It’s not right.”

“Detective Ryder talked to Leland Harwood an hour before he died, ma’am. He thinks Harwood was sent to harm your son.”

She looked at me. “Is that true?”

I nodded. “Leland Harwood was an enforcer. He always worked for others.”

Her face tightened in anger, turned to Harry.

“You’ll respect the confidentiality of my son’s files?”

“You have our word on it,” Harry said.

Kayla Rudolnick looked into Harry’s eyes until she found something she needed to see.

“The storage facility is on Cottage Hill Road. I’ll get you the key.”

There were eight white boxes in the facility, rows of locked cages in an old warehouse; a guard had been alerted to our visit. We took the boxes from the cage rented by Mrs Rudolnick and stowed them in the trunk of the Crown Vic.

Picking up the last of the boxes, Harry nodded through the grid at the adjoining enclosure. I saw a crib, boxes of child’s toys, stuffed animals, posters pulled from walls, the tape at the edges brittle and yellow. A small wheelchair. A red bicycle with training wheels. Even under dust, the bike looked unused.

I suddenly knew what used-up prayers looked like. Harry sighed, shook his head, and we tiptoed away like thieves.

We dropped the files at Harry’s house, then returned to the station. I tapped Rudolnick, Bernard, into my computer, expecting an arrest record. Mitigating circumstances allowing Rudolnick to pay a fine, perhaps, slip past punishment if he enrolled in a program and stayed clean.

The computer whirred and beeped, and came up blinking:

NO RECORD.

I tried again. Same effect. Harry stared at the screen.

“Either the bust never happened, or it got wiped totally clean. And the second option takes some doing.”

Ms Verhooven gestured for Lucas to follow her. There was no furniture in the room and the realtor’s high heels banged on the parquet floor. Ms Verhooven was as bright as a new trumpet: blonde hair, yellow dress, white shoes. Bright teeth moving behind glossy pink lips. Long legs sheathed in silky hose, rising up past the knee-high hemline toward…Lucas felt himself hardening and looked away, knowing such notions had to be sublimated, to use a term from Rudolnick’s world.

Ms Verhooven pushed open a door and gestured grandly, like a woman on a TV prize show.

“Ta-da!” she said.

Lucas stared at a toilet. “Ta-da?”

The fixture was cream colored, just like the adjoining countertop. Ms Verhooven bent over the counter, stroked it like a kitten.

“Granite countertops in the restroom, Mr Lucasian. Real, honest manufactured stone. Over at Midtowne Office Estates the counters are only Corian.”

Lucas nodded, though he had no idea what she was talking about. He was most interested in the sink.

Note to self, he thought, buy bath towels.

There was a faux baroque gilt-framed mirror on the wall. Lucas glanced at a slender and clean-shaven man with a neat part in his short and trendy, red-highlighted hair. His suit was dark and conservative, like the blue shirt and muted tie. He looked young but affluent. A success-driven young man, a starry-eyed entrepreneur with backing from Daddy, ready to make it on his own in the world. There were plenty of them out there.

Lucas winked at the entrepreneur, then turned his attention to the sink, turning the hot water on and off.

“The neighborhood seems quite nice, Ms Verhooven, a warren of free enterprise.”

“This is mid-Mobile’s most prestigious mercantile complex, Mr Lucasian. An address here has cachet.” She pronounced it catch-hay. “You’re lucky. This location did have an interested party and a hold on the space for several months. But something fell through and it’s now available.”

Lucas almost laughed. They used to be office parks, now they were mercantile complexes. With catch-hay, nonetheless. He looked through slat blinds at several small clusters of offices, red-brick buildings, the tallest four stories. The grounds were nicely landscaped, myrtle and dogwood and circles of hedge. A few magnolia bushes, the ever-present azaleas.

Lucas looked across the street at the nearest building, a hundred feet distant. The top floor, fourth, was large and sparsely populated offices, a quiet little kingdom of teak and brass. On the next three floors, cubicle drones could be seen shuffling papers and talking on phones. There were four levels, but only the top floor interested Lucas. The space Ms Verhooven was showing was on the fourth floor as well, but the building was on a slight rise, putting Lucas above the level of the fourth floor across the way. The angle allowed Lucas to look down on the facing building, which tickled him.

“You’re in a wonderful business community, Mr Lucasian,” the rental agent chirped, seeing his eyes scanning the neighborhood. “Accounting firms, brokerages, financial advisors, that sort of thing. Four or five doctors. Two corporate headquarters, three legal firms…”

Lucas wandered through rooms smelling of fresh paint and cleanser. He struck several poses he found particularly businesslike: holding his chin and nodding out the window, clasping his hands at his belt and arching an eyebrow at the ceiling, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. Lucas cut a glance toward the building across the way, marveling at the luck of his location. Or had this perfect site been arranged by the man upstairs, divine guidance?

“It feels very businessy,” he said, pushing from the wall. “A place to call home. Where does one park, Ms Verhooven?”

“Around the back of the building. It’s a little out of the way, but –”

“No. That’s just perfect,” Lucas said. “Couldn’t be better.”

Ms Verhooven beamed. “What is it, basically, that your firm does, Mr Lucasian?”

“I’m in securities,” Lucas said. He chuckled at the wonderful double entendre: insecurities.

“Is the space to your liking, Mr Lucasian?” the agent trilled. “Everything you need?”

“Yes, Ms Verhooven,” Lucas said. “Everything is absolutely perfect.”

After catching up on paperwork and calls, we returned to Harry’s. I was eager to look at Rudolnick’s records, Harry less so.

My partner lived in a small enclave a couple miles west of downtown. The yards and houses weren’t large, but compensated with charm. There were trees aplenty, old live oaks and pecans and thick-leaved magnolias. Whenever I pulled into the neighborhood in summer, the shade made my soul feel twenty degrees cooler.

Harry’s house was a compact single-story Creole with a full gallery and a magnolia in the front yard. The paint was coral with mauve accents which, for Harry, showed restraint. In the setting, it looked just right, a contented house.

I felt as much at home as if I’d stepped into my own living room. Harry’s walls were red, the woodwork a light green. He had several pieces of art on the walls, primitive paintings of musicians picked up at the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis. The art was my influence; I fell in love with art in college, passed my enthusiasm on to Harry.

In return, he introduced me to jazz and blues. When we first started hanging out, he asked my musical influences, shaking his head at most. He’d pulled a vinyl of Louis Armstrong from its jacket, set it on the turntable, dropped the needle on a 1929 rendition of the W. C. Handy tune, “St Louis Blues”. It was like nothing I’d ever heard, bright and alive and flowing like a stream, and I was a convert before sixteen bars had passed.

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