“A pleasure, as always.”
“So can we just get through this and be on our way?” she asked. “Believe it or not, I have someone waiting for me that I actually want to spend my evening with.”
If the backend of the statement was meant to arise jealousy or some other form of complicit behavior from me, I had no idea, and no interest in finding out.
All I really wanted was for the meeting to be over.
Spreading my arms wide to either side, I merely said, “Have at it.”
“Good,” she muttered, taking a step to the side and leaning a hip against the counter, her arms folded.
If I had to guess, I would put her somewhere close to forty, though that number could go up or down by a few years depending on the day and the light she was standing under. With straight hair and never a bit of makeup, she seemed to adhere strictly to the government-issue look for middle-aged women.
The lack of humor, or warmth, or even basic human emotion, that came with it was probably her own personal touch.
Which couldn’t help but make me wonder about the veracity of her having someone waiting at home for her.
“Have you had any contact with-“
“Vic Baxter or anybody in his family?” I asked, having heard the questions more times than I cared to remember. “Not since the Christmas card last year.”
Pushing past my comment, Lipski continued, “Have you seen anybody suspicious since we last spoke?”
“Suspicious?” I asked, my eyebrows rising slightly. “You mean besides the bums covering all of Pioneer Square? Or the homeless outside of every 7/11 in the city?”
A look that relayed she was fast growing tired of my shtick crossed her face, though to her credit she refrained from saying anything.
“Yes, outside of them.”
“Then no,” I replied, opting to this time let it go at that. “I haven’t seen anybody suspicious.”
There was a time when things weren’t so bad between us, a point where I was even a bit thankful for what she was doing, the role that the service had in my life.
The problem was, after six years, any such feeling had fallen by the wayside.
“And your employment?” she asked.
“I keep showing up and they keep paying me,” I answered. “Really a pretty good little system we’ve got worked out.”
Casting a look around the place, Lipski seemed to inventory everything, from the bare walls to the lack of anything non-essential visible anywhere.
Just as they had mandated.
“Place still looks pretty good,” she said before flicking her gaze back over to me. “Same for the car. You need anything else?”
I knew the question was rhetorical, though I couldn’t seem to stem the flood of responses that come spilling to mind, the list growing exponentially each month.
“Nope. That about covers it.”
Chapter Nine
The day had been a long time coming, a box on the calendar so far in the future that for years Vic Baxter had refused to even acknowledge it. Allowing himself to do so would have been nothing short of setting up a disaster, skewing decision-making in the short term on the chance of something coming to fruition in the future.
Even as a date was considered, he had chosen to actively ignore it, waiting until a definitive timeline was put in place before giving in to the slightest notion that it could all come true.
Once it did, things had moved quickly, a whirlwind of ideas that for so long had seemed ethereal, all beginning in earnest, working together toward an outcome he still couldn’t quite fathom.
After six years, it could all be coming to a close.
The reality he had insulated himself with, the role he had been forced to take on, could recede back to where it began. Back to the place it was supposed to be, a working partnership rather than an unplanned monarchy.
Rising that morning, the thought had buoyed him in a way few things still managed to, his movements quicker, his mood bordering on gleeful as he turned out of his driveway and went not north toward work, but rather south.
South to the building he now found himself being admitted into, a place that he had been only once before, on the strict admonishment of his older brother Eric.
“Sign in here,” the guard said, flicking a bored glance up to Baxter. Raising an eyebrow his way, a series of hash marks shaved into it, the young man’s body language suggested he would rather be anywhere else in the world.
A sentiment Baxter was reasonably certain most every other person inside the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta shared with him.
Bending at the waist, Baxter scribbled his name, the time and date, and the prisoner he was there to visit.
“I see that the other member of our meeting is already here,” he said, pointing with the end of the ink pen to the name above his in order.
Holding his glance another moment, the young guard paused before flicking his gaze to the sheet.
“Go on back, you have thirty minutes.”
Reaching forward, he pressed a release on the underside of his desk, a short buzzer sounding out, followed by the distinctive click of the door behind him unlatching.
Mumbling thanks, Baxter pushed through, the visiting room lobby falling away behind him, giving way to a wide hallway. On either side of it was a series of doors, a window crosshatched with chicken wire inset on each, a single number stenciled on it in black paint.
Drawing his breath in, Baxter walked past half a dozen such rooms, a few hosting meetings just like the one he was now about to embark on, others sitting empty.
Keeping his body aimed down the center of the hallway, he moved past a pair of guards standing watch and entered into room number eight.
As he did so, two heads both turned to look at him.
On the right sat Julian Rothman, a local attorney that had matriculated south from New York, but somehow didn’t seem to have noticed. Everything about him – from the pinstriped double-breasted suit he wore to the red glow he always seemed to have on his cheeks – screamed the big city, his demeanor to match.
Today he had opted for a blue suit with a red tie that didn’t quite sit flush against his throat, the extra weight he carried making it almost impossible.
Giving the man nothing more than a tertiary glance, Baxter nodded before settling his gaze on the other man in the room, the very reason he was there.
Eric was his older brother by just two years in terms of the calendar, though many more than that seemed to separate them on terms of life experience and even responsibility. Having lost their parents while both in their mid-twenties, Eric had seized the reins for the family, building an enterprise with the inheritance that was left behind.
Much larger than Baxter, Eric resembled a small bear sitting on the far side of the table, his mane of hair thick, just starting to gray, only a bit of stubble covering his jaw.
It also appeared he had spent some time working out on the inside, his chest and shoulders larger than Baxter remembered.
“Eric,” he said, unable to stifle a smile. Taking a step forward, he moved as if he might hug his brother, at the very least shake his head, cut off only by the mechanized voice piped through the intercom stating, “No touching the prisoners.”
Matching the smile, Eric flicked a glance up to the speaker, letting his annoyance flash, before moving his attention back down to Baxter.
“Little brother, it’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you, as well,” Baxter replied.
Nodding, Eric motioned to the chair on the opposite side of the table. “Please, have a seat.”
Doing as instructed, Baxter slid down on the hard plastic, the corners of it biting into his lower back, though he didn’t let on in the slightest.
Not on a day when there were much more important matters to dwell on.
“How you been?” he asked. “You look good.”
“He’s good, I’m good, we’re all good, thanks for asking,” Rothman a
nswered, inserting himself back into the conversation, drawing the attention of both brothers his way. Glancing between them, he added, “Listen, fellas, I don’t mean to break up the family moment here, but I’m due in court across town soon.”
Casting a quick glance over to Eric, Baxter could see a similar sentiment to what he was feeling cross over his brother’s face, though he didn’t dare press it.
For what they were paying Rothman, it would be assumed that he would sit and let them play catch-up for as long as they wanted.
At the same time, he wasn’t the most sought-after defense attorney in the city for nothing.
“So,” he said, raising his thick hands to the table and flopping them down, lacing his fingers together, “I’ve brought us together here today to prepare for Eric’s upcoming parole hearing. It took a damn Act of God, and some serious bullshitting on my part to make it happen, but we’re on the books.”
The news had come down a few weeks before, something Baxter still couldn’t quite believe, his inside seizing slightly at the mere mention of it.
“Does that mean they’re giving us a hearing, or we actually have a shot at this thing?” Eric asked.
“This the government we’re talking about here,” Rothman answered. “They wouldn’t be giving us a hearing unless there was a shot.”
Leaving the words to hang in the air a moment, he waited as the brothers exchanged a glance.
“But we’ve got to be smart about it,” Rothman pressed. “Just going in and playing the whole repentance angle isn’t going to be enough. We need something that fundamentally alters the foundation of the case.”
Again, the two brothers looked to one another, not bothering to go back to Rothman, allowing their gaze to linger as they seemed to communicate in silence.
That very thing was something they had discussed on Baxter’s previous visit.
Something that had just recently started to bust open.
“I might be able to help with that.”
Chapter Ten
The hope for a few hours of rest in front of the air conditioning unit had turned into five, a far larger chunk than Radney Creel had anticipated. The moment his eyes popped open, he could tell by the angle of the sun outside that it was later than he wanted, his mind instantly into motion.
Rising from his spot on the floor, his back and legs itchy from the thick carpet, he took up a t-shirt and boxers from the pile by the door. Stepping into them, he emerged in the kitchen a moment later to find Elijah Pyle still seated at the table, a fresh cigar stuck between his teeth, a second one resting on the lip of the ashtray beside him.
Though, to his credit, that one didn’t appear to be lit.
Leaning forward so his elbows rested against the front edge of the table, his tank top had been stripped away, revealing a chest of neon white, the lack of any hair a stark contrast to the thick spread on his arms.
In his hands were a barrel brush and one of his prized Wilson Combat X-9 handguns, a small bottle of gun oil by his wrist, the smell of it mixing with the cigar smoke to make for a noxious mix in the small space.
“Morning, sunshine,” Pyle said, glancing up for a moment before returning to his work.
“More like afternoon,” Creel replied. “Why the hell didn’t you wake me?”
A crease appeared between Pyle’s brows as he continued working on the weapon, using his tongue to push the cigar over to the side of his mouth.
“Not my job.” Whisking at the interior of the barrel for another moment, he jerked the brush free and peered inside before setting both down before him. “Thanks for putting on some damn pants, too. Next time I see that thing out, I’m taking it off.”
Feeling a hundred different responses come to the fore, Creel chose not to bother with a single one.
Time and again he had encountered men like Pyle, knowing it wouldn’t lead anywhere he particularly wanted to go.
“You talk to the old man yet?” Creel asked.
“Not my job, either,” Pyle responded, shaking his head slightly. “He expecting us?”
Three hours earlier perhaps, but now that he was up, Creel would handle the call himself.
Yet another thing he had learned in his short time with Pyle.
“I got it,” Creel replied, already turning back to the room from which he’d come. Behind him, he heard Pyle make a comment about asking for a second a/c unit, something so inconsequential he didn’t bother waiting to hear the full extent of it.
If it wasn’t the air conditioner, it would be something else.
It always was.
A threadbare path had been worn into the carpet of the hallway, the plywood under it bowing slightly beneath his weight as Creel moved forward. With each step, the smells of the kitchen receded, replaced by cat urine and something else he couldn’t quite place.
Poking into the living room for a moment, he stopped just long enough to snag his phone from the floor by where he’d been sleeping, a damp silhouette on the carpet like a crime scene chalk outline showing his exact position.
Shaking his head, both at the oppressive heat outside and the subpar accommodations within, Creel moved back into the hallway, past the bathroom and first bedroom to the far corner of the house. Pushing through the closed door, he stepped inside, the intense heat pulling sweat instantly to his skin.
Ignoring it, he closed the door, the reason for his choosing the room becoming obvious as all sound from the rest of the house fell away.
In its stead was nothing but still silence and the rancid smell of hot piss.
Setting his phone to speaker, he pushed the first speed dial and waited as three tones echoed through the room. Holding it at waist height before him, he paced a small circle around the space, his gaze focused on nothing but the phone.
Ten seconds later, it was answered.
“Is it done?”
The voice was low and thick, a trace of an accent present, the speaker a native Georgian through and through.
“It is.”
“Today?” the man asked.
“Early this morning,” Creel replied. “Before dawn.”
To that, there was a brief pause. “And you’re just now calling?”
The insinuation clear, Creel squeezed his eyes closed, feeling the salty sting of sweat in them.
“Had to stick around and see who showed up,” he replied.
A spasm of violent coughing erupted from the other end, the sound beginning wet and phlegmy, giving way to thick and coarse. Ending with a mighty throat clearing, when the man spoke again, his tone was much lighter.
“So who showed?”
“Nobody really,” Creel replied. “Local sheriff’s department. We’ll keep an eye out, see who else happens by.”
This time, the first response was a grunt, the standard reply when the old man needed a minute to process.
“The other thing,” he said after a full moment, “how’d you leave it?”
“Exactly as we talked about,” Creel replied.
“To the letter?”
“Exactly as we talked about,” Creel repeated.
Coming from anybody else, the question might be viewed as an insult. In this case, he knew it had nothing to do with questioning his abilities, the old man’s focus on their stated goal and nothing more.
“Good,” he eventually responded. “Stay on it, keep me updated on whatever you see or hear.”
There was no need to give the directive, Creel already intimately aware of such a thing.
Just the same, he played along, knowing it was what Vic Baxter wanted to hear.
“You got it.”
Chapter Eleven
The interior of the kitchen was no more than a dozen feet in either direction, providing just enough room for the trio of criminalists clad in white to move about the space. Silent and plodding, they worked in concert, each making efforts to move in circles around the pool of blood encrusted into the rug on the floor.
After more than six hours, t
he surface of it was dried almost black, a combination of the saturation of the sanguineous liquid and mildew starting to form. Any moment flies would be arriving in droves, an eventuality only cut off thus far by every window and door in the place being shut tight.
A fact that had raised the temperature inside the cabin to triple digits.
Relegated to the front living room, Talula Davis stood with her hands resting on either hip, her body square to the open doorway into the kitchen, watching the criminalists go about their work.
Beside her, Sheriff Arnold Charbonneau rested his forearms across his prodigious stomach, the surface providing an easy shelf for his limbs.
No more than a half hour present, already his tan uniform shirt was soaked with sweat, as was the front of his light brown hair. Droplets could be seen forming along the front tips of his bushy mustache, threatening to drip down with each word he spoke.
“Okay,” he said, “walk me through this one more time.”
In the period since finding the body, Davis had been through it at least a handful of times. Beginning with Tanner over dispatch, she had done the same with the medical examiner and the crime scene investigators, units from Gatlinburg managing to make it down long before the Sheriff could be bothered to show.
Something each of them had commented on, coupling with everything else about the morning to make Davis wish she was still back in her basement, pounding away at her punching bag.
Just an hour past noon, and already she could tell it was going to be a day needing a second workout for sure.
“Responded to a call from dispatch this morning saying we had been summoned out here to the lake,” Davis intoned, her voice detached, a direct result of rote repetition. “Was not even yet onsite when I was flagged down by Peg Bannister who pointed me to this cabin and mentioned the presence of blood and a body.”
“Hmm,” Charbonneau said, nodding. “And you didn’t think to call for backup at that point?”
“Dispatch mentioned a body when they called me,” Davis replied. “I assumed I was the backup.”
The Subway ; The Debt ; Catastrophic Page 4