The Death Collectors

by J. A. Kerley

  “Remember how I gave Carla Hutchins my card, said to call me? That was her. Seems Cunt and Funt just left. Danbury was trying to ask questions. Ms Hutchins, well, she ain’t real happy with you, Carson.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Danbury kept dropping your name, like you and she were old friends. Hutchins kinda got the impression you sent Danbury.”

  “I’ll deal with it,” I said.

  I paced and stewed for the hour I figured it would take Danbury to return to Mobile, then called Channel 14. The woman at the switchboard took a deep breath. “Welcome to Channel 14, home of the Action 14 news and Mega-Doppler Weather, a member of the Clarity Broadcasting Network.”

  “You have to say that every time you pick up the phone?” I asked.

  “I do,” she replied, not sounding happy about it.

  “I’d like to speak with DeeDee Danbury. This is Detective Carson Ryder of the Mobile Police Department.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. She was just here, but took off again. Let me try her cell.”

  The connection clicked to Hold. I waited in the vacuum.

  “She’s not answering, sir. She’s hard to catch unless she wants to be caught.”

  “How about Funt, can you catch him?”

  “Who, sir?”

  “Her usual camera guy.”

  “Borgurt Zipinski.” She sounded like she smelled something bad when she said it. “He’s all yours.”

  Back on Hold. Two minutes ticked by before the phone picked up.

  “Hey there, Detective,” came a voice sounding like it had just been oiled. “S’up?”

  “I need to get in touch with Ms Danbury, pronto,” I said. “You can do it, you’re her Panza a lot of the time, right?”

  “Her what?”

  “Her sidekick. You can connect even when she’s off the radar?”

  “She pretty much does her own thing, sport. I mean, uh, Detective.” He was having a good time.

  “How ’bout this, Sancho,” I said. “Take down this number and get it to her. Tell her I’m not a happy camper.”

  “Oh, that’ll give her goosepimples for sure.” Zipinski chuckled as he wrote down the number.

  I stared at my cellphone, unable to do anything else. Ten minutes into my stare, she called.

  “Hi, pogie. What’s up?”

  “Ms Danbury, I think you may be following Harry and me. And you’re upsetting people that don’t need to be upset. I’m also beginning to suspect you may be withholding information vital to a case, which is illeg-”

  “White or red?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m pulling into a wine shop now, picking up a bottle. You prefer white or red? In this kind of heat I tend toward white, but since we’re consuming it on your premises - sevenish? - you decide.”

  “Listen up, Ms Danbury, there’s no way -”

  “Silly me,” she said. “I’ll just get one of each.”

  She broke our connection.

  Chapter 21

  “Red or white, Ryder?” Danbury said, standing at my kitchen counter with a sommelier-style corkscrew in her hand. “Or I could mix them together. Is that how they get pink zin?”

  I held up my bottle of Bass Ale. “I’m good.”

  Danbury had arrived a few minutes before seven, two bottles clinking in a paper sack. Before I could speak, she’d charged into my kitchen and was opening the wine.

  “I brought a corkscrew just in case.”

  “I actually own a corkscrew, Ms Danbury.”

  “A real one, or does it fold off your Swiss Army knife?”

  I winced. She winked and bustled back into the living room, sat, perched her wineglass on a bare knee. The TV uniform had been replaced by ragged, sun-bleached cut-offs and a white tee-shirt with the logo of the Mobile Bay Birder’s Project over one modest breast.

  “I confess,” she said.

  “Confess what?”

  “How I knew about the candles, that the victim was a nun, that Carla Hutchins was involved. I confess that I don’t know how I know. That is, I don’t know my source.”

  “You’re…” I caught myself.

  She leaned back and sipped her wine, unconcerned. “Lying? No. I rarely lie, Ryder, though you may not believe that. Sometimes, when I can’t get a story any other way, I’ll bend the truth -”

  “Shred,” I corrected.

  “Twist,” she refined, smiling. “Your move.”

  I leaned forward. “Why don’t you know the source? He-she-they send messages in a bottle?”

  “I get fast little phone hints. Why and who, I have no idea.”

  “Male or female?”

  “The voice is muffled or filtered. Neither and both.”

  It stopped me. Hakkam, the manager at the Cozy Cabins, had described the caller who rented the room almost the same way:

  Voice not up here like woman…not down here like man. In middle.

  “Tell me what they say.”

  She rose, walked to the deck door, stepped outside. I shook my head and followed. She was leaning against the deck railing and studying the flat and shimmering Gulf.

  “Danbury? Hello?”

  She set her glass on the rail, turned. “Remember my barter offer? We’re two-stepping into teamwork. Who’s going to lead?”

  “Teamwork? You’re out of your mind.”

  “They’re real interesting messages, Ryder. Coy, almost. Tantalizing little drops of information. But I get the feeling I’m being played. Everybody plays reporters, of course, that’s the object of Spinworld. But there’s something else here. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe someone more experienced with such things could figure it out.” She batted her eyes at me, twisted a lock of hair, and affected the voice of Scarlett O’Hara. “Maybe someone jus’ lak a big, strong po-liceman.”

  I didn’t want to smile, but couldn’t help it. “You’re a piece of work, Ms Danbury.”

  She picked up her wine, sipped. A light breeze floated her hair as she studied me.

  “We’re alike in many ways, you know.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We see the seamier side of life. I cover murders and car crashes and suicides because that’s what people tune in to see. I’m there as an observer, you as a participant. And it’s going to continue no matter what - your participation, my observation. Let’s drop the walls between our functions, just a bit, and see if it doesn’t make things better for both of us.”

  “You’re no longer an observer, Ms Danbury. If you’re receiving information about the case, you’re a participant.”

  She raised her glass to me. “Touché. But since the lines have already begun to blur, let’s see where it goes. I’ll start by telling you about my source. Remember my last news bit, when I mentioned the candles in the victim’s room?”

  “I remember.”

  “No other station had that, the Register didn’t. I knew because at three a.m. I got roused from my beauty sleep by a voice that said, ‘Ask the cops about candles in the Cozy Cabins.’ Click, that’s it. Weird voice, blocked number. The next night the information got refined. Twothirty a.m.: ‘Ask about candles on the eyes.’”

  “That’s it?”

  She held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor, I didn’t hear another peep until Saturday night.”

  “That the victim was Marie Gilbeaux.”

  “Of course, all the stations had the news that afternoon. It wasn’t much of a scoop. Then, last night, I hear. ‘Carla Hutchins in Chunchula.’”

  “And you raced up to Hutchins’s place. Used my name.”

  “I used it because I truthfully could: ‘Ms Hutchins, I’m a reporter for Channel 14, and an acquaintance of Detective Carson Ryder. We’re both looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of Marie Gilbeaux.’” She looked at me. “Is it true?”

  “It’s the truth,” I admitted. “Bent and hobbled and walking on crutches, but it’s the truth.”

  “I don’t guess you ever did anyth
ing that lame in your work?”

  I winced again. Danbury smiled a gotcha smile. “Like I said, we’re not too different. Back to my question: Why is someone giving me little tastes of info about a dead woman and a live one?”

  “All this could be coming from inside the department. Your own sources. You’re just making up the late-night calls to yank my chain.”

  “I do have a few sources there, but I’m positive it’s not them. You’ve done a good job of keeping them hushed. What’s the tie between the women?”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Another ‘no comment’?”

  “Guess so.”

  “We’ll find out, pogie. We’re just getting started.”

  “We’ll? We’re? What’s with the plural?”

  She turned away and looked out over the blue water. She took a deep breath before turning to face me again.

  “I was hoping you’d agree on your own to give me a little assist. Since it’s going to happen anyway.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I didn’t start this thing. You lost your cool with Borg. And I really did stand up for you with the station management. But the rest was my idea.”

  “What are you babbling about, Danbury?”

  “This afternoon my station struck a deal with your chief. You’re supposed to keep me in the loop on this case. Now that we’re partners, Ryder, how about telling me what’s really going on?”

  She smiled hesitantly, waiting for my explosion of anger. I couldn’t help it; I started laughing.

  “You made a rotten deal,” I said. “No one has the slightest idea.”

  Chapter 22

  “You brought this on yourself, Ryder,” Chief Plackett said, demoting me from detective to surname. He turned from the window behind his desk to face me. It wasn’t a happy face.

  “It came out of the blue is all I’m saying, Chief.”

  He put his knuckles on his desk, leaned toward me. “I didn’t know the reporter would contact you so early. I was going to call you in this morning, give you the news about the agreement with Channel 14.”

  I glanced down at the globe, saw Siberia, looked away. “You didn’t expect that the first thing she’d do would be to -”

  “I’m not happy with the entire situation. I’m even less happy that you’re trying to shift the emphasis from you to me.”

  “I didn’t mean to, sir.”

  “Nor did you mean to manhandle the camera guy -”

  “Videographer.”

  Plackett narrowed an eye at my correction. Where was Harry when I needed him? He would have heard what I was about to say, faked a sneeze halfway through the first syllable. Or simply punched me. The chief would probably have jumped Harry to lieutenant. Instead, Plackett turned back to the window, as if the oily morning mist was more attractive.

  “Here’s the way it’s shaken out, Ryder. The station is forgetting you attacked one of their personnel. In return, one of their reporters - this Danbury woman - gets in the door. She wants first shot at a story on this case, and that’s what we’ve agreed to allow her. Don’t give away company secrets, but don’t be prickly about sharing the other info. And make sure Nautilus is singing off that page, too.”

  “She’s already stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. If she does it again, it might -”

  He spun back to me. “Zero,” he snapped.

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “Your argumentation allowance on this, Ryder. It’s zero. With a zee, as in zip your damn lips and keep them that way.”

  I nodded. He glared at me like he thought I nodded too loud. He jerked his thumb toward the door. I did the quietest nod possible, then crept out. I headed back to the detectives’ room. Harry stood in Roy Trent’s cubicle, Roy sitting long-faced with his arms crossed over a pile of files. When I walked up, Roy pushed back dark hair falling to his eyebrows, pointed to his brow.

  “How’s my forehead look, Carson?”

  “Uh, looks fine, Roy. Why?”

  He let the hair fall back. “I’ve been banging it into walls for a week. That backshooting ten days back, Orange Lady? It’s not panning out the way I thought. We’re missing something.”

  “You got our sympathy,” Harry said. “But we got our own bucket of worms to untangle.”

  “Wanna trade buckets?” Roy asked, only half-joking. “Fresh perspectives, all that?”

  “On one condition,” Harry said. “There’s no art involved, right? You didn’t have any art laying around the body, did you? Shiny little pictures?”

  Roy shook his head sadly. “Nope. Only thing near my vic’s body was a pool of blood. And an orange.”

  Harry and I made our way back to our desks. It was quiet on the floor, a couple guys on phones, the rest out on individual trails of misery. Summer’s heat was near peak, which always upped the homicide quotient. It didn’t help that Plackett had assigned our open cases to the other dicks, letting us full-throttle this one - not that it was making a difference.

  “The chief bang on your head a little?” Harry asked when we were out of Trent’s earshot. “Thump you and lump you?”

  “Shat on me and spat on me.”

  He mulled it over. “Not bad.”

  I said, “You no doubt heard rumors of an unholy alliance…”

  “If you mean us and a certain lady reporter, I heard. We’ll keep her inside just enough to make her think she’s inside, but really…”

  I shot a thumbs-up. “She won’t get to know jackshit.”

  “There you go.”

  I looked up and saw my desk a dozen feet ahead of me. The desktop was a paper junkyard: files, folders, sticky notes, timelines, interviews, photos. But nothing had sparked that Aha! Moment - finding the single fact that pulls one event into alignment with another, then another and another…and the sound of falling dominos is like a twelve-string guitar set on High Anthem Rock.

  All I saw was a silent pile I’d swam through a dozen times from six different directions. If I sat in front of it again, I’d drown.

  I stopped dead in the middle of the floor.

  “Carson?” Harry said. “You all right?”

  “I need to see water,” I said.

  We were on the causeway fifteen minutes later, and I felt better than in days. A slender strip of land crossing northern Mobile Bay between Baldwin and Mobile counties, the causeway borders on holy. Wider stretches are home to fish camps, crab shacks and ramshackle bait shops. Here and there, vehicles park beside the two-lane, pickup trucks and station wagons predominant. Somewhere near the vehicle you’ll see an old fisherman - black more often than not - kicked back in a lawn chair, rod in hand, hoping for a little luck. Sometimes entire extended families fish together, generations drawn to the water, to the causeway.

  Another reason I love the causeway is that it bends to the whim of nature. Scant feet higher than the waves, the causeway occasionally gets flooded over. For a few days, it’s home to flounder and specs and scuttling crabs. When it dries, we humans get sway of it again. Still, now and then, a big gator crawls from the Bay intent on taking a walk on the pavement. Traffic slows or stops until the sheriff’s department sends someone out to relocate ol’ snaggletooth. I love such moments.

  Paralleling the causeway is the Bayway, an elevated conduit built to facilitate the passage of workers and goods to and from Mobile with the greatest possible dispatch. No floods, no gators, no families relaxing with a line in the water. I drive the Bayway only when speed is necessary or the causeway is closed. Like many contrivances designed to outwit nature and expedite commerce, it’s a soulless creation, the antithesis of the causeway.

  Harry pulled in behind an old junker either abandoned or awaiting repairs. We were at one of the wider pull-offs, a good twenty feet to the high reeds at the water’s edge. The low waves slapped the shore. A pair of crabbers were pulling traps a couple hundred feet out in the Bay, dragging the rectangular baskets to the surface, checking for blues. They followed a rigorous patte
rn: check a trap, pull a few draughts from their beers, putter twenty or so feet to the next trap. I admired their methodology.

  Harry and I leaned against the side of the car, drank convenience-store coffee, and stared at the crab fishermen. The sun was pushing higher and the water sparkled. I said, “I had to get away from my desk, bro. I’m getting sucked under by details.”

  Harry sipped, thought. He studied the abandoned wreck down the way, pasted with bumper stickers: I’m On the High Road to Heaven, Jesus Saves, Read Your Bible.

  “Strip it down to bumper stickers for me, Cars.” He said, pointing at the junker, “Just like that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Leave out the details. Tell me what’s gone down in the fewest possible words.”

  I studied the crabbers and gathered my thoughts. “In 1970, Marsden Hexcamp kicks off a killing spree that lasts almost two years. He creates a collection of paintings and drawings based on at least six murders: his ‘Art of the Final Moment’. Fast-forward to approximately two weeks ago. A man named Rubin Coyle is -”

  “How big a bumper you got?” Harry said. “Edit.”

  I did some mental Cuisinarting, said, “Two weeks back, negotiator Coyle gets art in mail. Disappears shortly thereafter.”

  “That’s better. Keep going.”

  “Marie Gilbeaux killed the following Saturday or Sunday. Buried.”

  “Good,” Harry said. “Then, on Monday -”

  “We’re made Officers of the Year,” I joked.

  Harry shot me the eye. I said, “Sorry. Monday or Tuesday, Marie Gilbeaux is dug up. Tuesday night her body is left in the Cozy Cabins. A strange and carefully crafted scene. Body found Wednesday, the same day someone mails art to her at the convent.”

  Harry popped the lid from another coffee, poured in three packets of sugar, two of cream, stirred it with his little finger. “Art possibly created by the same artist who killed a half-dozen folks thirty years earlier. What else?”

  “If you mean facts, that’s all there is.”

  Harry shook coffee drips from his finger, sucked it. “You know, Cars, with all the loose wires cut off, one thing screams at me.”