Tennessee Night (The 8th Jack Nightingale Novel)

by Stephen Leather

  As the plane reached its cruising altitude, Amanda went over to his seat. ‘Feel free to move around and you may smoke if you wish,’ she said. ‘Flight time today is around three hours fifty minutes. Can I get you anything to drink, Jack?’

  Nightingale had no idea what might be waiting for him, so he settled on a cup of coffee. ‘Amanda, wouldn’t it have been faster for me to go by scheduled flight? It’s only three hours to Miami by Delta. Why the big fuss?’

  ‘We’re not headed to Miami,’ she said. ‘Our destination is Brownsville.’

  Nightingale pulled out his pack of Marlboro and lit one. This made no sense, Wainwright’s SMS message had definitely said Miami. And it probably wasn’t a coincidence that it was the place where Joshua Wainwright had been born and raised. He knew Amanda would have no answers for him, so he had no option but to wait and see. He closed his eyes and tried to drift off to sleep. If past experience of working for Wainwright was anything to go by, sleep might be in short supply in the days ahead.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sergeant Bonnie Parker was not far shy of forty, though she’d managed to keep her coffee-coloured skin pretty unlined, and her shoulder length brown hair free of any trace of grey, though only she and her hairdresser knew how natural that was. She hit the gym whenever her schedule allowed and had managed to stay in pretty good shape, so far. Her husband had always told her that he’d first been attracted to her by her smile, but there was no trace of it today. She was wishing that someone else had caught this case, as it was looking like a real stinker. She’d been ten years on Homicide and never come across anything like this. Even assuming there had been a crime committed, the scene had been hopelessly compromised. Not that she could find it in herself to blame anyone. Parker had two school-age kids herself, and if she’d found either of them hanging from a bannister she’d have raced to cut them down too, probably tried CPR as well, even though it had been useless, and she would surely have called the paramedics before the police.

  The chances were she wasn’t really going to be needed on this case. She didn’t smell homicide here. The only other people in the house when the kid had died had been the parents, and they both seemed completely distraught. The mother was sitting in an armchair, her head in her hands and her body racked by sobs. The father had needed to be pried away from his daughter’s body so the ME could complete the formalities of pronouncing her dead. He was standing over by the window now, gazing in every direction except towards the body.

  The two uniformed cops who’d answered the 911 call were still hanging around, having taken brief statements from the parents and passed on the facts of the case to Parker. The kid had been ten, upstairs doing her homework and enjoying a little computer time. A good kid, trusted and trustworthy according to the parents. No, she hadn’t seemed any different lately, no trouble at school, no indication she might be being bullied, she was her normal happy self.

  Ten years on Homicide and Parker thought she’d seen it all, parents killing their kids, wives their husbands, brothers their sisters. And vice-versa. She’d seen death in every brutal form imaginable, and some she’d never cared to imagine. She’d seen all kinds of suicides, from teenagers right up to men and women in their nineties. But in all that time, she’d never known a ten-year-old girl to hang herself.

  The ME, a tall black woman in a dark pant-suit walked over to her. ‘I’m done for the moment, Bonnie’ she said. ‘Death by hanging, cervical vertebrae broken, also her windpipe crushed, but the fractures killed her, though that’s not official until I write up the autopsy.’

  Parker nodded. ’Any other marks on the body?’ she asked.

  ‘Not that I could see, I wasn’t about to strip her naked in front of the parents. No bruising to arms or legs. I think she may have a broken rib, but chances are that was post-mortem. The paramedics say the father was trying CPR pretty aggressively.’

  ‘Wasting his time?’

  ‘Of course, but what would you expect? Situation like that you’d try anything.’

  ‘Anything to suggest it isn’t what it looks like?’

  ‘Come on, Bonnie, you know better than that. I give the medical verdict, I’m no detective. We’ll be looking for rope fibres under her nails, on her clothes. My guess is it’s exactly what it looks like.’

  ‘Not much to see here, I guess. Will you take her now?’

  ‘If that’s okay. This is the part where you take proper statements from the parents?’

  ‘Yeah. Has to be done. Never gets any easier.’

  ‘Sooner you than me,’ said the coroner. ‘You might want to take them into the sitting room, while we move the body.’

  ‘I can try.’

  CHAPTER 6

  The Gulfstream landed at Brownsville around ten minutes ahead of Amanda’s prediction, and the plane had barely stopped taxiing before Amanda had the door open and the steps lowered. ‘Your car’s waiting, Jack,’ she said, and Nightingale unbuckled his belt, picked up his bag and raincoat and headed for the exit.

  This time the limousine was a long white Mercedes but the tall black driver in the dark grey chauffeur’s uniform seemed like the twin of the one in New York. He asked Nightingale if he wanted to put his bag in the trunk, but it was small enough to travel with him. Besides, there were one or two things inside that Nightingale preferred to keep close. The car swung out of the private terminal headed for downtown Brownsville. It wasn’t Nightingale’s first trip to the city of Wainwright’s birth and he knew it was the county seat of Cameron County, named after a Major Jacob Jennings Brown who had died during a Mexican attack on what had then been Fort Texas.

  The limousine drove onto a gated estate where every house occupied a lot the size of a football field, then pulled up in front of Wainwright’s mansion. The chauffeur opened the rear door and as Nightingale stepped out the front door of the house opened. Valerie was as tall and elegant as ever, dressed in a white skirt suit which was a striking contrast to her ebony skin. She favoured him with a tight smile, though her brow kept its frown. Nightingale was puzzled. What could be worrying her? Normally she made the Sphinx look demonstrative. ‘Good evening, Jack. Welcome to Brownsville. Mr. Wainwright is waiting for you.’

  Nightingale nodded a greeting, but she’d already turned away and was walking down the wood panelled entrance hall with its curved staircase, towards an oak door, which stood open. She walked through without knocking and Nightingale followed. The room was large, though not ostentatiously so, and dominated by leather sofas and chairs in Wainwright’s preferred colour choice of cream. The man himself was sitting in the middle of one of the sofas, and looked up as Nightingale entered. Unusually there was no broad grin.

  ‘Glad you’re here, Jack. Take a seat.’

  Nightingale looked at him closely. He was a little less casually dressed than normal, with a light grey sport jacket, white shirt and a plain red tie, though the knot hung around his second button, and the shirt collar was open, revealing a thick gold neck chain. He wasn’t wearing his trademark baseball cap and he clearly hadn’t shaved that day. He was smoking one of his usual foot long Cuban cigars, but seemed to be puffing on it more frequently than normal, and the muscle at the left corner of his mouth twitched occasionally. Nightingale sat in the chair opposite and lit a cigarette. ‘I thought I was going to Miami,’ he said.

  Wainwright shook his head. ‘Something else has come up now, and you’re the man I need for it. You want a drink?’ He pressed a remote control which was lying on the coffee table in front of him, and a stunning tall blonde woman came in through the far door almost immediately.

  ‘Large Glenfiddich for me, please, Maria. Jack?’

  ‘Will I be driving?’

  ‘Not till tomorrow, I guess.’

  ‘A Corona would be great, then. Thanks.’

  ‘In the bottle?’ asked Wainwright. ‘With a slice of lime.’

  Nightingale grinned. ‘You know me so well.’

  Maria was back inside a minute with the dr
inks, and the two men nodded their thanks. She took away Wainwright’s empty glass, and Nightingale wondered how many the young man had got through today. Probably made no difference, Nightingale had never known him to show any effects from his intake of single malt. Wainwright waited until Maria shut the door behind her, then reached into the red cardboard file that lay on the coffee table in front of him, pulled out a single sheet of stiff-looking yellowish paper, put it down on the table again and pointed at it. ‘Take a look,’ he said.

  Nightingale put his bottle down and reached the paper, but stopped suddenly when his fingers were still an inch or two away. A puzzled look came over his face.

  ‘You feel it?’ asked Wainwright. ‘You’re getting much more sensitive about these things.’

  ‘I feel something,’ said Nightingale, closing his eyes in concentration. ‘Not quite sure...cold, hate, evil. What is this thing, Joshua?’

  ‘Take a look. Far as I know, it’s not dangerous, but I got the same vibrations from it you did. It has power, and it’s not designed for good.’

  Nightingale shuddered, and opened his eyes, trying to banish the uneasy feelings. He pulled his hand back, but leaned further forward in his chair to take a good look. It wasn’t paper after all, but thicker and stiffer, the edges less regular. Parchment maybe, or vellum. Or some kind of skin, hopefully animal. There was writing on it, the words picked out in a deep red. The colour of dried blood, thought Nightingale, with another shudder.

  Wainwright sat still on the sofa as he smoked his cigar, his eyes fixed on Nightingale. Finally Nightingale stretched out his hand and pulled the sheet towards him, turning it around so he could read it. The vibrations had gone now, and he read the words in front of him. It was a list of names. Names that meant nothing to him at all. The first three had wavy black lines drawn through them, but the names could still be read easily enough. Nightingale read them aloud, keeping count on his fingers as he did so.

  ‘Susan Johnson, Martin Brown, Madison Moore, Olivia Taylor, Timmy Williams, David Robinson, Charmaine Wendover, Julia Smith, Kaitlyn Jones, Emma Miller, Carmen Garcia, Naomi Fisher. Twelve names, the first three crossed off.’

  Wainwright nodded.

  ‘So who are they, and what does it mean?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘As for what it means, damned if I know, I just know it can’t be good. I found that list on my nightstand three days ago. Not here, another place I own.’

  ‘In Brownsville?’

  ‘No,’ said Wainwright, and left it at that.

  ‘So who was in the house with you?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Maria, Carl, who’s one of my drivers, Valerie and Mary Chan the cook. All of them have been with me years, none of them know anything about it or how it came to be there.’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘Yeah, so they say, and I’m inclined to believe them. None of them know anything about the...other side of my life.’

  Which meant none of them knew Wainwright was a well-experienced adept of the left-hand path, a practitioner of the Occult, a powerful Satanist. ‘So how could it have got there?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘My guess is that whoever wrote it made it appear there. It’s called apparation, when an object is moved through the Astral plane by sheer force of will.’

  ‘Apparition? Like a ghost?’

  Wainwright shook his head. ‘Apparation. With an “a”. From the Latin apparatus. To appear magically.’

  ‘That’s possible?’

  ‘Yes, very much so. But out of my league at the moment.’

  Nightingale took a sip of his Corona. If it was out of Wainwright’s league, then this was heavy stuff. ‘So what does it mean?’ asked Nightingale. ‘Who are these people on the list?’

  ‘Until this morning, I’d never heard of any of them, and there seemed no point in Googling them. Most of the names don’t seem that uncommon, I’d have ended up with thousands of hits, and no information on how to link them.’

  ‘So what changed this morning?’

  ‘Well, first you need to know that when the parchment arrived, there were just nine names on it. All of them strangers to me. Two days ago, when I looked at it again, there were ten names, but the first one had that line struck through it. There was a new one at the bottom to take its place.’

  ‘The line and the new name just appeared?’

  Wainwright nodded and put his cigar down onto a large crystal ashtray. ‘And the parchment hadn’t been out of my sight since it arrived.’

  ‘So the crossed out name, do you think...’

  Wainwright held up a hand to stop him. ‘Same thing happened yesterday, the second name, Martin Brown, was struck through, and there was an eleventh name at the bottom, Carmen Garcia. So I did some checking. A girl called Susan Amanda Johnson died at about the time her name was crossed off. Eleven years old. And this is where it gets weird – she died in Brownsville, Tennessee.’

  Nightingale frowned. ‘Brownsville? Where we are now?’

  ‘Different Brownsville. Population ten thousand or so. To the west of the State. Brownsville Tennessee and Brownsville Texas were both named after general Jacob Jennings Brown.’

  ‘I was never great at history or geography,’ said Nightingale. ‘But this can’t be a coincidence, can it?’

  ‘It’s as if someone is trying to send me a message, Jack.’

  ‘How did the girl die?’

  ‘She fell out of her bedroom window. Her parents think it was an accident. Homicide detectives had attended, but found no suspicious circumstances. The girl had been alone in her room at the time, and appeared to have climbed onto her computer desk to open the window, before falling.’

  Nightingale winced at the image.

  ‘My people checked for any deaths of Martin Browns and sure enough they found one. Another kid. Also in Tennessee. This time in Memphis. Martin was ten years old. He was in the bath and his parents had become concerned by the length of time he’d taken and his father had finally broken down the locked door in a panic. Martin had sliced vertically several times down both wrists with his father’s razor, and was dead when the paramedics arrived. Again, the police had found no signs of anyone else being involved in the death. But this one was clearly no accident.’

  ‘So you think someone is causing this to happen?’

  ‘Has to be, Jack. And it gets worse.’ Wainwright closed his eyes, opened them again and looked at the ceiling. His cigar was burning unnoticed in the ashtray in front of him. He exhaled deeply. Nightingale was surprised, he’d never known the young billionaire to be anything but direct, yet here he was seemingly taking forever to say what was on his mind. Finally Wainwright clenched his jaw, gave a curt nod and spoke. ‘Same thing this morning, name number three, Madison Moore was crossed out, and there was a new name written at the bottom. Number twelve. Naomi Fisher.’

  Wainwright stopped speaking and closed his eyes again.

  ‘And?’ said Nightingale.

  Wainwright sighed. ‘Naomi Fisher’s ten years old, Jack. And she’s also my niece.’

  Both men were silent, and Nightingale used the pause to light another cigarette. Wainwright remembered his cigar, picked it up, looked at the glowing end and took a deep drag.

  ‘There’s probably quite a few Naomi Fishers in America,’ said Nightingale but he could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

  ‘Probably. How many of them have an uncle who gets sent a cursed list of names with her on it? I’m betting it’s not a coincidence. This is personal, Jack. I’m sure of it.’

  Nightingale nodded. Coincidences did happen but more often than not things happened for a reason. ‘I never knew you had a niece.’

  ‘Why would you?’ He shrugged. ‘She’s my sister’s daughter. My younger sister Sarah lives in Tennessee.’

  ‘Hillbilly country.’

  Wainwright grinned. ‘To be fair, a large chunk of the State is inhabited by gap-toothed yokels high on moonshine. But it also has Nashville, the home of country music
, and Memphis, home of the late, great Elvis Presley. That’s where my sister lives. Memphis. She’s married to a Baptist minister.’

  Nightingale’s tolerance for shocks was pretty high, but this one was too much for him. His eyebrows shot skywards. ‘A Minister? Your sister is married to a man of God?’

  ‘There’s no need to be so surprised, Jack. I go to a lot of trouble to make sure that no one knows who – what – I am. As far as anyone in my family knows, I got where I am through property deals and a lot of good luck.’

  ‘So when they were married, you went to the wedding?’

  ‘You mean did I go to the church? Sure. I’m not a demon, Jack, I’m not going to run screaming out of a church at the sight of a crucifix. I must say I was very happy not to be asked to be Naomi’s godfather, that could have been difficult. But it was never going to happen. Maybe Matthew picked up some vibes from me.’

  ‘Matthew is your brother-in-law?’

  ‘Yeah, the Reverend Matthew Fisher. He’s a good guy, his heart’s in the right place.’

  ‘Have you checked on the girl?’

  ‘What would you think? I was on the phone as soon as I saw her name. Naomi’s fine, doing great at school, star of the soccer team, happy and healthy. I hope I was casual enough that Sarah didn’t pick up on anything being wrong.’

  ‘And Madison Moore?’

  ‘She died at about the time her name was crossed off. Also in Tennessee. Knoxville. To the east of the State. Swallowed a bottle of drain killer. Just sat down in the kitchen, unscrewed the top and drank it down.’

  Nightingale shuddered.

  ‘So three names crossed off, three kids dead, at least two of them suicide and Susan Johnson could well have killed herself. That list wasn’t sent to me for bedtime reading, Jack. Someone’s out to get me, and maybe because I’m kinda hard to reach they’ve decided to hit my family.’