The Unwilling

by John Hart

  French closed his eyes, but could not unsee the flayed skin, the exposed organs. Were there a theme to the crime, it would be that people, in their expressions of cruelty, could be endlessly inventive. “Anything else you can tell me?”

  “Not before the autopsy. Speaking of which…” He gestured at the van, the body inside.

  “Hang on one second, Doc.”

  Burklow was moving in their direction. When he arrived, he nodded at the ME, but spoke to French. “We’ve been working from the inside out. No sign of her clothes or personal belongings. No usable footprints or tire tracks, but the chain out front is cut. Looks like they came right up the main drive.”

  “Pretty brazen.”

  “Dark of night. Light traffic. We did find this.” He brandished a clear, plastic evidence bag.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  Burklow handed over the bag. It contained a crumpled package made of foil and white paper. “We found two more empty packages like this one.”

  “Looks fresh.”

  “I’d say it’s brand-new.”

  “Oh, the sick bastard…”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  French walked away, and studied the sky as if it were the last clean thing in the world. The ME looked a question, so Burklow explained. “Polaroid film,” he said. “The son of a bitch took pictures.”

  * * *

  It was still early when French left the crime scene. He tried to stay, but couldn’t focus, couldn’t lead.

  “What do you mean you’re leaving? Where are you going?”

  “I can’t talk about it, Ken.”

  “We still have work to do. Uniforms are canvassing. We haven’t identified the body. The hell’s wrong with you?”

  French shook his head; kept walking. He’d buried thoughts of his son, but Jason was out there. So was an explanation.

  Please, God …

  “Bill, stop walking away from me. I’m talking to you.”

  Burklow trailed him to the car, two steps back. French found his keys. “Just wrap the scene, Ken. Whatever it takes. Remind everyone to keep this quiet. I’ll meet you at the station later.”

  “The station? Our next stop should be the medical examiner’s office. He’ll have her on the table by now.”

  “Fine, I’ll meet you there.”

  “Bill. What the hell?”

  “Step away, Ken.”

  “Not without an explanation.”

  “I mean it. Step away.” He put a palm on his partner’s chest, and pushed hard enough to make him stumble back. He wanted to apologize, but was in a river of guilt, and drowning.

  Her name is Tyra …

  Wrenching at the key, French fired the cruiser and stepped on the gas, spraying dirt and gravel. Watching his partner in the rearview, he felt a twinge, but the river took that, too.

  Sooner or later they’d find her name.

  Jason’s would be next.

  The heavy cruiser blew down the dirt road, but traffic at the four-lane held him up. A city bus. A tractor trailer. When a gap opened, he turned for the quarry, and stepped on it. Jason mattered, but Gibby came first.

  It was Friday.

  Senior Skip.

  French found him in a field above the stony beach, sitting with Chance on the hood of a car. They were laughing and drinking, and terribly young.

  Chance saw him first. “Oh shit.” He hid the beer behind his back.

  “Chance, I need a moment with my son.” He took Gibby by the arm, and guided him into the field. “Have you seen your brother?”

  Gibby’s eyebrows went up. “Why?”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Then no.”

  “I want you to stay away from him.”

  “We’ve had this discussion—”

  “No, we’ve not, not like this. Stay away from your brother. I don’t have time to explain. Just do it. Spend the night with Chance, if you want. Go home or go to the movies. Go to a party, I don’t care. Anywhere your brother is not.”

  “You’re starting to freak me out.”

  “Good. Great. That’s what I want. But I have a question, too, and it’s important. Last Saturday, you went driving. Out in the country, you said, you and Jason and two girls.” French took a deep breath, and said a silent prayer. “What were their names?”

  “The girls?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  “Tyra and Sara.”

  “Tyra’s a brunette? Five-two, five-three?”

  “And Sara’s blond and tall. What does this have to do with anything? Why should I stay away from Jason? Dad, where are you going? Dad…”

  The boy continued to speak, but French was underwater now, deep in the current, half-deaf and drowning.

  Sweet Lord, help us, he thought.

  Gibby knows her, too.

  11

  I watched my father walk away, then returned to Chance, who handed me a fresh beer. “What the heck was that about?”

  I leaned beside him, metal hot where the sun had baked it. “He’s looking for Jason.”

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  I shook my head. “He was being kind of a dick.”

  But that was only part of it. He was still treating me like a kid. I didn’t like it. Sipping beer, I stared out at the water. Twenty kids were rafted up a hundred yards offshore. Beyond them, a lone figure floated on an inner tube, his legs bent at the knees, his head tipped back. “You good for a minute?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Sit tight.”

  I walked to the water’s edge, skinned off my shirt, and made a shallow dive. At the raft of kids, people called my name.

  Yo, Gibby. Yo …

  Jason saw me when I was twenty yards out, but he barely moved. His head turned. His hands made lazy circles in the water. “Gibby in the house.”

  Hanging on the edge of his tube, I saw the lazy smile, the sunburn on his prison skin. Half a six-pack hung from plastic rings. “Dad is looking for you.”

  Jason’s head rose a few inches. He cracked one eye to stare off at the shore, then shrugged without actually shrugging. It was a vibe, the way he settled his head back against the tube. “He was asking about the girls.”

  “What girls?” Jason closed his eyes, a beer can cradled on his chest.

  “Tyra, mostly, but Sara, too. I think it was a cop thing.”

  “She probably wrecked another car.”

  “He told me to stay away from you.”

  “How’s that working out for you, little brother?” Jason smiled but kept his eyes closed, as if his joke was the end of it.

  “It was weird. He looked scared.”

  “That is also not my problem.”

  But I played the conversation again: my father’s hands on my shoulders, and how they’d squeezed hard and then fluttered like feathers. “Do you ever get scared?”

  “Of what?”

  “Anything.”

  “Nope.”

  “Not ever?”

  “Well, that’s the thing about war, isn’t it? Once enough people try to kill you, the little things don’t matter. Cops. The past. Not even dying.”

  “What about prison?”

  I knew the question was unfair, but so was his talk of fearlessness and little things. My life was made of little things. Jason understood, I thought, but I’d made him angry, too.

  “Prison is different.”

  He tried to end the discussion, but I was tired of being the youngest, the sheltered, the only one unproven by combat or adulthood or a long dive from a tall cliff. “But you’re scared of it,” I said. “You have to be scared of something.”

  “Why? Because you are?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “But you throw prison in my face when you know fuck-all about it.”

  “Only because I saw you on the road that day.”

  “You have no idea what you saw.”

  “I saw your face, man, your face.”

  My voice was too
loud, and if someone asked, I’d be hard-pressed to say why any of it mattered so much now, on this day. Maybe it was because my father was afraid and my brother calm, or because the cliff rose above us. Perhaps it was due to thoughts of war and graduation, or the fact that Chance was dodging the draft, and made no bones about it. Whatever the reasons, I needed to see something of myself behind the armor my brother wore as easily as a T-shirt. If Jason understood that need, he didn’t care. His eyes were equally hard, his mouth the same tight line. “Just swim away,” he said. “Swim away, little fish.”

  * * *

  When French left his son at the quarry, he understood the hurt feelings he’d left behind. But what else could he do? Even if Jason was not involved in Tyra’s death—Please, God, don’t let him be involved—he’d still be swept into the investigation and tarred with the doubts born of his own poor choices. He was the killer, the user, the convict. How many people would resist the certainties of guilt by implication? French had few illusions.

  Oh, you don’t know about Jason French?

  The war?

  The drugs?

  They say he killed a hundred people …

  Charlotte was a big city, but not that big. People knew your business, or thought they did, or thought they had the right. Gibby would be tarred with the same brush. So would Gabrielle.

  But that wasn’t the worst, not even close.

  “Jesus Christ, Gibby knew her, too.”

  His good boy …

  His youngest …

  Murder cases swept up innocent people all the time. He’d seen it before: prison, shattered lives. Suspicion alone could tip the world on its side. “Damn it, Jason. Can’t you think, just for once? Can’t you make a decent, goddamn choice?”

  It sounded unfair, but French had no idea what his oldest son did with his days and nights. Was he still abusing drugs? If so, where did he get them and from whom? Was he violent? Committing crimes? Where did he get money? How did he live? Whispers from other cops said Jason might be involved in something big. Guns, maybe. Or maybe gangs. The only certainty was that minutes led to hours, hours to days, and days to patterns of life. That was the math behind every bad case he’d ever worked. Small decisions. The wrong step. After that, it was all about the road.

  French gave himself those seconds—those hard, dark moments of frustration and doubt—then locked the emotion down. He’d bought a few hours.

  Not enough …

  Going first to the house at Water and Tenth, he found two men on the sofa, hip-deep in chicken wings and beer. Neither had seen Jason for days. “He’s still paying rent?”

  “Two months, cash in advance.”

  “But he’s not sleeping here?”

  “Money is money. I don’t care where he sleeps.”

  “Any idea where I can find him?”

  “The man has ladies.”

  “Who and how many and where?”

  “More than us, is all I know.”

  Feet went up on the coffee table, and French let his eyes move over the room. The air smelled of grease and smoke and spilled beer. On television, Muhammad Ali was trash-talking some other fighter. “What about a woman named Tyra?”

  “Tyra Norris…” One man shook his head. “He won’t be anywhere near that girl…”

  “Not after what went down.”

  French gauged the interruption, looking from one to the other. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it was a scene, man.”

  They shook their heads, and drank beer and watched Ali. It took a minute to get the details, but once they started talking, both men reveled in descriptions of the ruined Mercedes and Tyra in the dirt, of how she’d screamed and pulled a gun, and how her skirt tended to ride up on one side. French raised a hand to slow them down. “Say that last part again.”

  “She said your boy fucks women and kills dreams…”

  “A direct quote…”

  “She was yelling it up and down the street…”

  “But she still tried to make out with him…”

  “Truth, brother. Like … aggressively.”

  “She’s crazy, but crazy hot, you know?”

  “Lively, I’d say…”

  “Like a wall socket is lively…”

  They high-fived. They laughed.

  “How did Jason handle it?”

  “Oh, hey, man, Jason was cool. He rolled, but he’s like that. I told him to his face he was one badass dude. I said he was an iceman…”

  “Like falling snow.”

  “Yeah, yeah, cold but quiet. Just like that.”

  “Anything else I should know? Did she say anything else? Do anything else?”

  Both men shook their heads. “Nah, man. She tagged a few more cars, and split. Haven’t seen her since.”

  French looked for signs of deceit; saw none. “If anyone else asks, you tell them what you told me, that Jason was in total control at all times.”

  “Truth is truth.”

  “I need to check his room.”

  They went back to their beer and television, and French took the staircase up. In Jason’s room he found clothing, condoms, and in the back of a drawer, a .38 Special that he pocketed. Nothing else seemed remotely personal: a rumpled bed, a novel by Leon Uris called Battle Cry. Back outside, French knelt by the tree where Tyra had supposedly wrecked her Mercedes. He had no reason to doubt the men inside, but no reason to trust them, either. Gouged bark made him feel better. So did the shredded lawn, the bits of glass and broken plastic. Tyra had been here. She’d argued with his son; threatened him with a gun.

  A shard of red plastic glinted in the sun.

  Even if he was on drugs …

  Even if the war had messed him up …

  But French no longer knew his son. Drugs, prison, life in the dark parts of the city …

  He needed more, so he worked the back alleys and informants, the off-license bars and drug dens and flophouses. He shook the trees, hoping his boy would fall out.

  It didn’t happen.

  By dusk, he could no longer ignore the radio. It squawked the moment he got back in the car. “David 218, Dispatch.”

  He keyed the mic. “David 218, go ahead, Dispatch.”

  “Detective Burklow has called four times now.”

  “Stand by, Dispatch.” French lowered the mic and took a final moment for his sons.

  What else could he do?

  Gibby was safe—he’d made sure.

  But Jason …

  French stared out at a broken street lined with warehouses and bikers and women in short skirts. It was his seventh stop, and the story was the same as everywhere else. People knew Jason, but none had seen him, none would talk.

  “Dispatch, David 218. Please tell Detective Burklow I’m 10-49, ETA twelve minutes.”

  12

  From a window above, Jason watched his father drive away. He saw the top of the car, the rear windshield and taillights. When his father was gone, Jason lit a cigarette and turned. “What did he want?”

  A big biker stood at the top of the stairs, a mountain of muscle and denim and faded ink. “He wanted you.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “Didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

  Jason left the window, and sat at a scarred, wooden table. The floor beneath his feet was old, the windows behind him dirty glass in metal frames with peeling paint. The room had been an office once, with views down on to a factory floor where they’d made phone books back in the forties and fifties. Some hard-ass bikers owned it now, a club moving south from Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Pagans. They’d turned the factory into a private club with garages in back and rooms upstairs to crash. They had members, cash, credibility.

  “Is your old man going to be a problem?”

  The biker’s name was Darius Simms, a chapter president with ties running all the way back to the club’s early days in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He crossed his arms, and blue ink bulged on his biceps, the Argo tattoo
as ubiquitous to Pagans as the patches on their denim cuts.

  Jason said, “No. No problem.”

  “As long as that’s true, our deal stands. The room. The privileges. But no one here likes cops with a reason to show up, unexpected.”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “Make sure it doesn’t.”

  The biker clumped back down the stairs, and Jason moved to the big, interior window with views on to the old factory floor. The machines had been removed years ago. Now a bar ran along two sides, with booths and tables in the center. The crowd was not too big, maybe twenty bikers and twice as many women. A 1946 Flathead hung from the ceiling on chains. The lighting was poor. Gray smoke made a haze.

  “Hey, baby. Are we doing this or not?”

  Jason had almost forgotten about the woman, half-reclined on the low, long sofa. “What was your name again?”

  “Angel.”

  “How old are you, Angel?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “I’m thinking nineteen.”

  “Twenty-five. Nineteen. Does it matter?”

  Jason studied her from across the room, the short skirt and tall boots. The red hair was nice. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t do that anymore.”

  “Don’t do what? Pretty girls? I have friends who say different. They say Jason French always has the dope, and that he screws like a rock star, too.”

  Jason looked away from the smile she’d conjured like a two-bit magic trick.

  “Come on, baby doll.” She swung her feet to the floor, revealing more of her long, pale thighs. “Can’t you help a girl out?”

  “Here.” Jason put a bottle on the table. “Go crazy.”

  “Johnnie Walker?”

  “That’s Johnnie Walker Blue.”

  “This wasn’t the deal.”

  “What deal? You knocked on my door. You came inside.”

  “If you’re not dealing, why does the club let you stay here?”

  Jason shrugged. “That’s between me and the club.”

  She tried again, soot-eyed and willing and far too young. “You don’t think I’m pretty enough?”

  “I think you’re beautiful.”

  She stood, half-pouting and half-angry. “You could have stopped me at the door, you know.”

  “I should have done that. You’re right.”