Tennessee Night (The 8th Jack Nightingale Novel)

by Stephen Leather

  She walked towards the museum.

  She was just inside the door, when the security guard noticed the stench and fumes from the lighter fluid and started to walk over, but he was still ten feet away when she clicked the lighter and erupted into a ball of flames. The guard took one horrified look, and sprinted away, racing back in under thirty seconds with the fire blanket he’d pulled from the wall, frantically tearing it open. He held it in front of him, used it to push the girl to the ground and tried desperately to wrap her in it to smother the flames, all the time shouting for more help.

  The paramedics arrived inside five minutes. Security guard Jefferson Wood was taken to hospital with multiple second-degree burns, and took weeks to recover.

  Kaitlyn Isabella Jones, aged eleven, was pronounced dead at the scene. The coroner would later return a verdict of suicide.

  Nobody paid any attention to Dudák who stood by the side wall of the museum and fed, eyes closed and smiling with pleasure.

  CHAPTER 45

  Nightingale woke at 9.30 and immediately regretted it. His jaw ached furiously, and he could feel the swelling with his fingers. A glance in the mirror showed a fine collection of colours, and a lump the size of an egg. He swallowed two more Ibuprofen tablets, then called for a room-service breakfast, since he had no way of knowing when he might next find time to eat.

  The full Peabody breakfast arrived inside ten minutes, and Nightingale did it full justice, despite the aching jaw. He gave silent thanks for Wainwright’s bottomless credit cards when he saw the price, boosted by delivery charge, service charge and the inevitable State sales tax.

  He collected his car from the hotel garage, and headed to the Galilee Baptist Church parking lot, left the car there and walked the hundred yards or so to the Fisher home. He wasn’t looking forward to this chat at all, but he’d come to the conclusion that the only way to keep Naomi safe was to persuade the Fishers to take the same advice he’d given to Bonnie Parker the previous night, and to get the little girl as far away from Memphis as possible. He was hoping at least one of her parents would be at home, but he hadn’t wanted to call ahead to try to explain the reason for his visit.

  A Mercedes GLS SUV stood parked on the opposite side of the road from the Fisher’s house, and about fifty yards past it, Wainwright had mentioned getting some security in place, and Nightingale wondered if the dark-tinted windows concealed a few heavies, a watcher team to ensure no harm came to the girl or her family. The car was a little conspicuous, but then it would be hard to stay hidden and yet keep a close watch.

  He arrived at the Fishers’ front door, and pressed the bell, but immediately noticed that the door was ajar. He heard no signs of movement inside the house, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to rise. Nightingale didn’t like the feel of this at all. He pulled his jacket sleeve over his right hand, and pushed the door gently. There was still no sound from inside.

  He slowly edged through the door and into the hallway. He trod carefully, making no sound, and then ducked his head into the open door of the dining room on the right. The table wasn’t laid, everything seemed to be in the right place, and there was nobody there. Another few steps, and he looked into the sitting room on the left. Again, nobody was inside, everything seemed neat and tidy. The television was on, playing a Memphis news channel, with pictures of paramedics and police outside a low building that looked like a motel. There was no sound, and the mute logo showed on the top-right of the screen. Nightingale shuddered, hoping there wasn’t a dead child involved.

  He moved on down the corridor, to the foot of the stairs, then turned left. He looked up at the first floor and his eyes widened in horror.

  Matthew Fisher was hanging from the top bannister post, a thin rope round his neck, his body swinging against the handrail, his head at an impossible angle, his face blue, and his swollen tongue protruding from between his teeth. Nightingale’s hand reached for his cigarettes, almost in a reflex action, but he pushed them back down into his pocket. He had the feeling he wouldn’t want to leave any evidence of his presence here. He forced his eyes downwards, and moved on to the kitchen, and then the study. Nobody in either of them, and nothing looked out of place to his casual glance. He had the feeling there’d be no time for a search, and he had no idea what he might be looking for.

  He paused again then edged his way upstairs, testing each step before he put his weight on it, hoping for no loose, squeaky boards. His luck held, and as he neared the top he stared at the wall, to avoid looking into the dead eyes of Matthew Fisher.

  He could hear a voice, coming from the room at the end of the corridor. The door stood half open, so he edged his way along, stood outside and listened. A man’s voice. Quiet, and repetitive. ‘I’m so sorry, honey, I’m so sorry. I never thought, I never thought, it’s all my fault, I’m so sorry, so sorry...’

  Nightingale tried to peer through the crack at the side of the door, but it was the wrong side, and he just saw the side wall. Inch by inch, he moved forward until he could see round the door.

  Sarah Fisher lay on her bed, her head practically severed from her body by the huge gash across her throat. The bedspread, walls and floor ran red with the blood that had fountained everywhere. Sitting on the bed next to her, looking down at her, was a man in a dark jacket and jeans, both of them stained with the dead woman’s blood. In his right hand, he held a large, black handled kitchen knife, which was also covered in blood. He kept on talking to the dead woman, apologising and begging her forgiveness.

  Nightingale must have made some kind of noise, or the man sensed his presence somehow. He spun round, rising from the bed in one movement, like an uncoiling spring, his face a demented mask of murderous rage, his fist clenched around the knife.

  It was Joshua Wainwright.

  The fury vanished from Wainwright’s face, he laid the knife down on the bed and straightened up again. ‘You scared the life out of me,’ he said. He took a step forwards, but Nightingale raised a warning finger.

  ‘That’s far enough, Joshua. Don’t come any nearer to me. Now tell me what happened, and make it very quick.’

  Wainwright didn’t waste time arguing, nor did he move any closer. He took a deep breath and let it all come out, his voice sounding like a machine, and his eyes never leaving Nightingale’s. ‘Long story short, I decided to handle this my way, get them out. Came into Memphis incognito, took a taxi down here this morning, planning to get my guys across the road to help me move them, if I couldn’t persuade them. I got two dead men across the road, I walked in on this. I’d say it all went down twenty minutes before I got here. Jack, Naomi’s gone.’

  ‘Any signs of a struggle in her room?’

  ‘Not that I can see, but how much struggling could a ten-year old girl do against someone who could do all this?’

  ‘She could be in school,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘I’ll guess not.’ said Wainwright.

  The landline rang on the bedside table, Joshua picked up. ‘Uh-huh,’ he grunted into the phone.

  Nightingale couldn’t make out what the caller was saying, just Wainwright’s replies.

  ‘No...sorry...it’s probably just a stomach virus...day or two...thanks for calling.’ He hung up. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said, without irony. ‘That was the school. They wanted to know why Naomi didn’t show up today.’

  ‘That settles that,’ said Nightingale, ‘someone has got her. We need to leave, now.’

  Wainwright shook his head. ‘That’s my sister, Jack. I can’t leave her like this’

  Nightingale hated to be brutal, but there was no choice. ‘She’s dead, Joshua. Nothing you can do for her. Whoever did this might be watching the house, seen us come in and be planning to call it in. If the Police find us here, all the lawyers you can buy won’t get us out inside a month, and Naomi needs us. Wipe the knife off. Get yourself one of Matthew’s overcoats to cover yourself, wait for me downstairs and then we’re going to walk slowly and calmly to my car.
Do it now.’

  Wainwright was accustomed to giving orders, rather than taking them, but he didn’t argue. He wiped the knife handle on a pillow-slip, He gave one last anguished look at his sister’s body and headed out, down the stairs, picked an overcoat off the hat stand in the entrance hall and stood waiting.

  Nightingale walked quickly into Naomi’s bedroom. The bed was neatly made and everything seemed to be in its proper place. There was a gold crucifix and a copy of the New Testament on the nightstand. Nightingale picked them up and dropped them into his coat pocket.

  He left the room, hurried downstairs and walked straight out the front door with Wainwright directly behind him. Neither of them stopped to shut the door. They walked up the street to the church parking lot, barely glancing at the Mercedes across the way.

  ‘I touched nothing this visit,’ said Nightingale, ‘except the doorbell, and I wiped that. I’m guessing you touched almost everything.’

  ‘Probably,’ said Joshua.

  ‘We had no time to clean up,’ said Nightingale. ‘The knife was the important thing. If it comes to it, you’re family and can spin some story about visiting last night. But better hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  They reached the Escape, climbed in and Nightingale drove off, slowly and carefully, in no particular direction. He took turns at random. In the distance he could hear sirens, gradually getting closer. It could have been a coincidence, but Nightingale was glad not to be sticking around to find out.

  CHAPTER 46

  The woman in the wheelchair was up early again, the pain making a full night’s sleep an almost impossible dream. She sat in front of her computer screen and played the recording of the early news from Memphis. The girl who’d set herself on fire at the Civil Rights Museum was the top item, with pictures of ambulances, police cars and a fire truck in front of the building. The cops weren’t naming the girl yet, but the woman knew who she must be. Three more and the list would be complete, and her revenge finalised. Then she could give up the struggle, and die contented.

  It was a shame that Nightingale was not in custody, and an even bigger shame that he had not been shot dead in Beale Street the previous morning. That had been her wish, but even under control, Julia Smith had not been experienced in handling a gun, and bullets had flown in every direction. Nightingale had been lucky, some others not.

  Still, Nightingale was just a minion, and would be taken care of in due course. The main focus of her hatred was the other, and it seemed that he had been flushed out from hiding. She would richly enjoy seeing him lose everything he held dear.

  She thought back bitterly to a time when it had been her who made great plans, gave orders and pulled strings. Now she was reduced to watching, while others moved the chessmen around the board. Some of the plan had been explained to her, and it had been promised that the man who had orchestrated her destruction would himself be brought down, and she would live long enough to see his death, and Nightingale’s. But she had not been told why or how the other children had to die, or what was bringing about the deaths. The one she had made her pact with had promised her what she had asked for, but did not welcome questions.

  The Memphis news channel was now bringing updates on a new, breaking story. Police had been called to a house near the Galilee Baptist Church, where reports were coming out of two people dead in what might be a domestic murder-suicide incident. Again, no names were being released yet.

  The woman in the wheelchair forced her mouth into a smile of triumph, then she pressed the bell for her nurse.

  She needed to be changed.

  CHAPTER 47

  Nightingale pulled into the parking lot of a small shopping plaza, found an empty space with no other cars within thirty yards and turned off the engine, ‘Why have you stopped here?’ asked Wainwright.

  ‘We have to be somewhere,’ said Nightingale. ’And this is as good a place as any. I’m pretty sure we weren’t followed, and we can’t be overheard.’

  ‘We need to find Naomi, and fast.’

  ‘Saying it won’t make it happen. We’re in a city of over half a million people spread over three hundred square miles. We won’t be tracking her down. It’s a job for the Memphis PD.’

  ‘No. They’ll never find her in time. Whoever’s done this had it planned all along.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Plus the first thing they’d do is arrest us. Maybe I could think of another way to play this, but we’re going to need a place to operate from. And not in Memphis.’

  ‘You think we’re going to leave town with all that’s left of my family in their hands? Jack, I just lost my sister and her husband back there, I’m not about to turn tail and run. We need to get Naomi back, and then these bastards are going to pay.’

  ‘No argument about that,’ said Nightingale. ‘And I know what you’re going through, believe me I do. But we can’t just react blindly, and we have nobody to react against. Neither of us can go back to those hotels, and I can’t do anything there. We need to get out of town, and fight them with their own weapons. Help me, and trust me. I’m invested in this too. Sophie Underwood means a lot to me, and they may have her too.’

  Wainwright stared out the windscreen. His eyes were red, and there was a twitching muscle in his cheek. He took a deep breath, the twitching stopped and he gave a sharp nod, He pulled out his mobile phone, and punched in a number.

  ‘Tyrone? It’s Joshua. Man, I need the house. Two hours. Maybe a week, not more. No, we’ll take care of ourselves. Thanks, appreciate it.’

  He put the phone away and turned to Nightingale. ‘We’re all set. Jack. Programme the GPS. We’re headed for the home of country music, Nashville.’

  He gave Nightingale the address and he tapped it into the SatNav, then followed the soothing voice east out of Memphis.

  CHAPTER 48

  Nightingale concentrated on the unfamiliar streets as his GPS guided him through east Memphis. Wainwright sat in silence, staring straight ahead through the windshield. Finally the SUV pulled onto the I-40 following the signs for Nashville, Nightingale set the cruise control at 65mph and relaxed a little. He looked across at Wainwright. ‘You want to tell me about it?’

  ‘You got a cigarette?’ said Wainwright. ‘Seem to have mislaid my humidor.’

  Nightingale took a cigarette and handed his pack across. ‘Hertz won’t like it.’ he said.

  Wainwright suggested what Hertz could do about it.

  ‘They might not like that either,’ said Nightingale. Even he felt that his system of trying to ‘lighten the moment’ might not be working, but what was he supposed to say to a man who’d just found his sister butchered, and his niece missing?

  Nightingale lit his own cigarette and handed the lighter across. Wainwright lit up and took a long drag, then went back to staring straight ahead. Nightingale said nothing. His training as a negotiator had stressed the importance of empathy, and also to know when not to push, when to keep quiet. Wainwright smoked in silence for a full two minutes before he spoke.

  ‘Shit, these things don’t last no time at all,’ said Wainwright scornfully. ‘A good cigar keeps me going over an hour.’

  ‘There are more, if you need them. Tell me what happened, Joshua. Everything.’

  ‘Down in Haiti, I pulled out some old voodoo stuff, Jack. Took a look into Naomi’s future. Seemed like there was something pretty nasty on her tail, so I decided to come up here, pull her out, Sarah and Matthew too, Whether they liked it or not. Thought I had a few days to spare. Never thought whoever would move so soon.’

  ‘I guess you plan for what they could do, rather than what they might do.’

  ‘Would have been good advice yesterday. I told nobody I was coming, don’t know why, I wasn’t sure I could trust my own people. Just a snatch team I brought in from New York.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell me,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Nope. Figured if you just kept nosing around here, whoever’s behind this would have their atte
ntion fixed on you, and I could be in and out with them before they noticed. I figured wrong.’

  ‘So I was a distraction? Or bait?’

  ‘I had to do what I had to do,’ said Wainwright. ‘But I failed miserably. My sister’s dead and my niece…’ He left the sentence unfinished and massaged the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Joshua, this isn’t your fault,’ said Nightingale, knowing, as he spoke, that his words were useless.

  ‘No? If she was anyone else’s sister she’d still be alive and her husband too. Slice it anyway you want to, Jack, she died because of me.’

  Nightingale couldn’t find an argument against that, and it was something Wainwright would need to live with. But there was no time to start the grieving process now, so he changed the subject. ‘You talked about something nasty following her?’

  ‘Yeah, saw it in an old crystal. Some kind of demon, following her, catching up to her, then kind of devouring her. Never saw anything like it before.’

  ‘Maybe I can shed some light on that,’ said Nightingale. ‘I went to see a guy last night who knows what’s going on.’

  ‘That where you got your face messed up?’

  ‘No, that was a girl.’ He saw the look of astonishment on Wainwright’s face. ‘Don’t ask. The guy was a Professor of German History, but I got the impression he knew an awful lot about our...about your world. He told me a different version of a very old story. Ever heard of the Pied Piper?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Wainwright, lighting another of Nightingale’s cigarettes. ‘The townsfolk offered him a purse of gold to catch all the rats, then reneged on the deal afterward.’

  ‘Well, according to Professor Schiller, the Pied Piper is some sort of demon called Dudák that has been operating in different countries for thousands of years. He quoted a few instances he knew of, and probably there were lots more. But not for the last eight hundred years, because he’d walled himself into a cave in Germany. Or someone had walled him in.’