by J. A. Kerley
Jacy heard the sound of a door come through the TV. She watched as the Picture Man showed up in the TV. He was laughing.
“Having our little fantasy hour are we, Rose? Why the hell you dressed like that?”
“Shut up, Tru. Go away.”
The Picture Man’s face filled Jacy’s TV screen. He said, “What’s this doing here? What are you up to?”
The Minute Hour stood. “Leave that alone.”
“Double cameras? Hah! That’s funny. She watch you pull your peter?”
Jacy saw the Minute Hour jam the cup into the Picture Man’s face, foamy white drink splashing all over. The Picture Man tried to slap at the Minute Hour but couldn’t reach past his arms. Then they weren’t on TV any more and there was a bunch of hollering and thumping. Jacy heard the Picture Man yell, “Enjoy it while you can, asshole,” and “One more day,” and the TV turned off.
One more day until I go home? Jacy wondered.
Chapter 41
Ryder plucked a volume from Sandhill’s shelf: Advanced Forensic Techniques. He opened it, saw a color plate of a body splayed open, and slid it back into place. He turned to Sandhill, sitting at the table in the apartment’s dining area.
“So what does it mean, Sandhill? What James said?”
Sandhill scribbled on a legal pad, attempting to make connections between names. Lines were scratched out, redrawn, scratched out again. Sandhill threw the pad on the table.
“Maybe nothing. Maybe James was wrong. Still, he seemed pretty certain about the ID being the contact and payoff man.”
Ryder frowned. “I’m not sure how much ‘pretty certain’ means from a scammer like James.”
A knocking at the door, soft and hesitant. Sandhill rose and opened it. Nike stood outside. She looked past Sandhill to Ryder.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here, Detective Ryder. I didn’t mean to bother you guys, I’ll stop back later.”
She turned to leave but Sandhill grabbed her arm. “Whoa, girl. Since when do me and Ryder scare you off?”
Ryder studied something in Nike Charlane’s face and made a show of checking his watch and seeming surprised at the time.
“I was just leaving, Ms. Charlane. I’m overdue at a meeting.”
“Overdue where?” Sandhill asked.
Ryder shot him a glance that said, shut up.
“Oh yeah,” Sandhill said. “See you later.”
Ryder descended the stairs. Nike drifted across the room to look out the window, as if preferring the damp heat to Sandhill’s cool white spaces. “Jacy’s ninth birthday is coming up soon, Conner.”
“Marie mentioned it the other day. Jacy talked about it a time or two.”
“Did you ever think about it? Her birthday?”
“I planned a party. Double chocolate cake, ice cream. I got her a kid’s set of mythology books and a—”
“Not the festivities, Conner, the timing. Did you always think she was born in September?”
Sandhill’s brow furrowed. “Come to think of it, I thought some years back you mentioned Jacy’s birthday was around Christmas. But I guess a few months don’t make a whole lot of dif—”
He froze. His eyes traced back and forth as if working equations on a mental blackboard. When he saw the sum chalked at the bottom, he turned to Nike, all color gone from his face.
“But that could mean …”
Nike looked in Sandhill’s eyes. “The name Jacy comes from the letters J and C.”
John Conner Sandhill stood abruptly and walked to the kitchen area, anger and confusion clouding his face. He put his hands on the countertop and leaned slowly forward as if searching for balance in a shifted universe.
“Why the hell didn’t Thena tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Nike said, “I swore I wouldn’t and, contrary to Thena’s wishes, I just did. I didn’t agree with her decision to not tell you, Conner. But it was Thena’s decision to make and mine to respect. Things are different now. And I think she’d want you to know.”
“A baby. And all this time you’ve been telling me—”
“That Jacy was born in December. Thena said you weren’t ready to know.”
“But that’s crazy, I—”
“Maybe you don’t remember how you used to be, how little time you had for anything but yourself.”
“For myself? Myself?”
“For your damned non-stop cases, then. Thena was going to tell you, at first. But she didn’t see you for weeks. You were too busy being Mr Detective. You couldn’t find a couple lousy hours to stop by, say, ‘How you doin’, Theen?’ Maybe hear what she had to say, what was happening in her life?”
“I was working, that’s all.” The words weren’t through Sandhill’s lips before he knew they sounded shrill and defensive.
“You were living your work. There’s a difference.”
“I tried to be with her as often as—”
“‘To thine own self be true’—isn’t that one of your mantras? Think back, Conner, without rosy glasses. How much time did you really spend with Thena?”
Sandhill closed his eyes and tumbled through memories. Thena arriving as he was leaving; the “I’m-working-through-the-night” calls; missed meals; parties she’d attended expecting him to arrive, his only presence a late phone call expressing regret …
Nike said, “When Thena found out she was pregnant she was torn in half. It wasn’t expected, and neither was the exhilaration she felt, the excitement. Thena interpreted her pregnancy as the most creative act imaginable, the creation of life. She believed such a creation demanded total involvement and nurturing.”
“I was fully able to deal with whatever—”
Nike shut Sandhill off with a raised hand. “Exactly, Conner. Thena knew you wouldn’t—couldn’t—share her awe, her excitement, but she knew you’d deal with it. You’d regard it as a duty. Thena didn’t want dutiful, Conner. She needed to share in a joy and commitment you weren’t ready for.”
“So she left. She simply ran away.”
Nike’s eyes flared. “She wasn’t running from, she was running to. To a life where she didn’t have to parcel off her energy between her child and a part-time partner. Where she could devote everything to Jacy. Then, one day, when you’d changed, if you changed, she’d explain and …”
Sandhill walked slowly to the couch and sat. Nike sat beside him, bringing his hand to her lap and wrapping it in hers.
“You’re different than you used to be, Conner. You started being different when you opened the restaurant. Started wearing those crazy vests, that goofy crown. I was standing in Spikes’s grocery last year when you passed by, singing. Conner Sandhill singing! I know part of it was an act, just like being the iron-spined detecting machine was partly an act …”
“Act? What do you—”
“Both are part of you, but not all of you. I’m not saying you’re another person; you’re still a headstrong jackass and won’t hear anyone else’s opinion until all of yours are used up, but you’re not so damned rigid any more.” Nike paused, touched Sandhill’s cheek. “I see how you’ve changed and I get sad Thena never got to.”
Sandhill leaned his head back and stared into the white of the ceiling. “All this time I thought she’d found someone else. That she’d moved away to be with him.”
Nike paused. “I was always surprised you let her go so easily. Thena was too. She was afraid you’d track her down, ask her to come back. She knew she’d be unable to resist.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want her back; I thought she’d finally wised up. I never understood what she saw in me in the first place.”
Nike’s lips brushed Sandhill’s fingertips and she laid her cheek softly against his hands. “She saw possibilities, the Conner Sandhill everyone else missed, the one you’ve become. Seeing possibilities was her gift, it was always … her …”
Nike’s voice shook apart. Sandhill wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He watched the room begin to pi
tch and shimmer. Sandhill fought the tears knowing he would lose, having to fight them anyway, hating himself for it.
Chapter 42
Sandhill’s phone rang through spaces as silent as a closed book. “I’d better grab that,” he said, squeezing Nike’s shoulder. “It could be important.”
Nike withdrew her arms from his neck and wiped her eyes with a tissue. Sandhill snatched the phone in mid-ring. Gentleman Jimmy James’s voice hissed through the wires, fear heated with anger.
“What you trying to do to me?”
Sandhill said, “What do you mean, do to you?”
“You doggin’ my ass. You got a guy on me; I made him soon’s I pulled into my driveway. You said I was done.”
Sandhill said, “Chill, James. What’s going on?”
“There’s a police car out front, got that little antenna sticking up. You the only people know about me. What you got someone in my shadow for?”
“I don’t. You recognize the guy in the car?”
“Might be that guy hired me. Coming to shut me up. Permanent maybe. You got me found out, damn your white ass.”
Sandhill’s mind raced with pictures and probabilities. “No way, James. Whatever’s going down was already in someone’s plans. Your sister there?”
“She an’ her church biddies went to some big prayin’ meeting up in Memphis; be gone a week. Oh man, that car just pulled up the driveway. I think it’s him, man.”
Sandhill subconsciously lowered to a crouch, phone tight to his ear. “Listen, James. You got a back door? Where’s it lead? OK; I want you to dial 911 and yell Fire! Call me when you’re safe.”
Sandhill hung up and stared at the phone for eight minutes. He picked it up halfway through the first ring. James said, “Shit, man, there’s a whole buncha fire vee-hicles out front of the house, firemen staring at the place. Kinda funny, I think about it.”
“Where you at, James?”
“Honeylee Blakee’s place, next block over. I’m watching between the houses.”
“Honey Lee … who’s that?”
“Lady friend of mine, man. She old but she bold.” Sandhill heard a woman’s laughter in the background; it didn’t sound that old.
“Where’s the guy was in your driveway?”
“You tol’ me scat, not stand and watch the show. But when the sirens started up in the distance, he burned his tires getting gone. Wherever he is, he not around here. Hope them firemen scared him off for good.”
“Doubtful. Your lady friend let you stay a few days?”
“She like that idea fine, her husband have other thoughts. I got a couple guys in my poker-playin’ crew let me rack with them a day or two.”
“Do it. I’m going to deal with the situation down here.”
“Gonna ’front the man in the gray suit?”
“Call me in two days, James. Things are about to change.”
“That’s what I comin’ to like ’bout you, Mr Gumbo King,” James chuckled. “You crazy as a foamin’ dog, but you get shit done.”
Sandhill tossed the phone back in the cradle and turned to Nike’s questioning eyes. “Someone’s watching James. Maybe to remind him to be quiet, or maybe to put him out of the game for keeps.”
“James? That old man you said faked the fall?” Nike said. “Why?”
“James saw someone. Either they’re having second thoughts about being seen, or this is the way they planned it all along.”
“Who?”
Sandhill stood and pulled a black leather vest over his red tee shirt. He went to the table beside his bed and retrieved the holstered Colt, set it on the table. He jammed the badge wallet in the back pocket of his jeans.
“The person I’m going to talk to this afternoon. If I’m right, he’ll be in Mobile in a couple hours. It’s time to jam a stick in the nest and see what comes slithering out.”
Captain Sampanong made a final check of the radar and GPS readout as the Petite Angel entered the wide mouth of Mobile Bay, Fort Morgan to the east, Dauphin Island to the west. Satisfied with the new heading, Sampanong turned to his companion on the bridge. “We’ll be berthed by five, Mr Mattoon, if we don’t meet a lot of traffic in the river.”
Mattoon surveyed the waters through binoculars. A gas platform lay a half-mile to portside. A dredging barge lumbered to starboard. Three hundred yards out, a charter fishing vessel crossed the Petite Angel’s bow, its deck packed with beer-woozy anglers who’d paid eighty dollars apiece for a half-day of crossing lines and vomiting. A flat smile crept to his lips as he imagined crushing the boat beneath his bow, watching the flotsam emerge from the stern like shattered china.
Samapanong said, “You look pleased, Mr Mattoon. You plan to announce the new facility soon, I take it?”
“Not personally, Captain. I’ve hired whores to do it for me.”
“Whores, sir?”
“Politicians. Puppets. Ones too proud to see the wires.” He passed the binoculars to Sampanong. “Thank you, Captain. It’s time for me to make several last-minute arrangements.”
Back in the sanctuary of his cabin, Mattoon’s fingers played across the computer keyboard and the screen lit with the image of Jacy Charlane bound on the cot. His palm stroked her pixilated face, and he removed from his desk the agenda for his evening. He picked up the phone and dialed the communications officer.
“Mr Henson? I need for you to connect me to Mobile. The mayor’s office. You have the number in your log.”
The call wouldn’t take long, Mattoon reflected as he listened to connections clicking through the distance, his finger already tracking the next number on the list.
The number that brought Lorelei. By tomorrow she’d be his.
The dark car slid into the apartment building’s lot and rumbled to the numbered slot under a listing carport riddled with dry rot. The apartments, twenty yards distant, were in similar disrepair; boxes built in the fifties, decomposing since the seventies—peeling paint, hanging gutters, cracked, weed-sprouting walkways, grass bleached a waterless yellow. The hot air smelled of rotting garbage.
Sandhill slipped from his truck and walked the fifty feet to the new arrival. A large man in a dark suit pushed from the vehicle, turned away as he reached back into the car to retrieve a battered black briefcase. Sandhill stopped a dozen feet behind the broad back.
“A detective commander living in white-trashville? They must not pay according to your talents, Ducky. Or maybe they do.”
Ainsley Duckworth spun, startled, his eyes narrowing at the source of the question. He chewed a toothpick, his brick-like wedge of brow furrowed. Sandhill saw embarrassment. And an instant of fear, quickly covered.
“What the hell you doing here, Sandhill?”
“I wanted to ask how things were in Montgomery.”
“Montgomery?”
“What were you going to do to James? Threats? Maybe a little rough stuff? Or were you planning a harder road? Must have been a surprise when the fire trucks rolled up.”
Duckworth spat the toothpick to the ground. “What the fuck you talking about, Sandhill? Fire trucks? James who? Get out of here.” Duckworth started toward his apartment, but Sandhill blocked the way.
“What’s going on, Ducky? Why’re you using a moke like Gentleman Jim to get the black community fired up?”
“Get outta my way, Sandhill. I think you’re hallucinating. There fumes coming off that gumbo of yours?”
“Where’s Terrence in all this, Ducks? You’re not creative enough to pull something like this together on your own. And how do the abducted girls figure in?”
Duckworth set his briefcase on the tarmac. “You’re one sick fuck, Sandhill. I’m looking for them, remember? I’m sorry that girl you were watching got snatched, but I wasn’t the one supposed to be watching her. Don’t take your failures out on me.”
Sandhill stepped toward Duckworth, hands balled into fists. Duckworth’s hand slipped beneath his jacket and unsnapped his holster.
“Hold up, whore
breath. Another step and this action goes heavyweight. It’s no secret you’re shadowing these cases, getting weirder every day. I’ll drop your ass and say you were babbling craziness, threatening me. You always pack that ankle piece, right? All I say is the crazy fuck went for it and I had no choice.”
Sandhill stared at the grinning commander and realized he’d let anger and impatience spark a confrontation that was going nowhere. He’d learned nothing, lost any chance for shadowing Duckworth, if the man was the one James recognized. He’d tipped his hand; an asshole move. Sandhill turned and walked back toward his truck, followed by Duckworth’s laughter.
“Get back to your kitchen, fry whore. I smell something burning.”
Chapter 43
“Go get her, Rose. It’s time.” Truman pulled a medicine vial from his pants pocket and tossed it to his brother. “Make sure she takes the sedative before we leave.”
Rose stared at the vial in his hand, stricken.
“Come on, Rose, move it,” Truman said. “I got the word an hour ago. We’re meeting on the river, same place as last year.”
“Why would he need another girl, Tru? He got one last year. What happened to Darla?”
“How the hell do I know? I don’t send the buyers a questionnaire. Go get her.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t order me around, Tru.”
Truman looked at the television angled toward the couch, the small camera atop the TV. “Don’t go getting all snippy because you’re losing the audience for your playtime, Rose.”
Rose stiffened and stared at his brother. “For my what?”
The smirk fell from Truman’s face. “I didn’t mean it like that, Rose, like back then. I meant …”
Rose spoke through clenched teeth. “You weren’t called for playtime, Tru. Don’t ever use that word again. Never. You don’t know what it means.”
“I said I’m sorry. I meant … Never mind what I meant. Just get her, brother.” Truman pursed his lips. “But first, come kiss and make up, Rose; give me one.”