The Broken Souls (Carson Ryder, Book 3)

by J. A. Kerley

Haley said, “You heard her in the middle of the night? That puts you in a select audience of a few hundred. You still listen, Mr…?”

  “Lucasian. Jim Lucasian.”

  The two shook hands. Lucasian turned to me. “Are you a friend or another devoted listener?”

  Haley said, “Detective Ryder is with the MPD. He and his partner are here in a surveillance role.”

  I winced. “Uh, Linc?” I said.

  Haley’s turn to wince. “Oh, sorry.”

  Lucasian held up his hand like making a pledge. “Your secret’s safe with me, Detective. I hope you nail the SOB.” He sauntered off toward the exit.

  I excused myself and wandered to a doorway. I turned the corner as Dani was entering the room. We nearly walked into one another. She stood in the threshold. My breath went shallow. Her fingertips touched my arm.

  “Please, Carson, can we talk about –”

  “There’s nothing to say,” I croaked.

  “I just want to explain.”

  I wanted to hear the explanation, to know which of us was wrong. I needed to assign blame. Instead, I shook my head, looked away.

  “Did you lie about going to bed with Kincannon?” I said, appearing more interested in a nearby lamp than Dani.

  “No. But I need you to know that it wasn’t –”

  I said, “No is all I needed to hear. We’ve got nothing more to talk about, Ms Danbury. You want to talk to somebody, talk to Buckie-boy.”

  Her fingers remained on my arm. I shook them loose and turned away. A few minutes later I saw her leave.

  Lucas slipped through the tight crowd and out the door. Time to head back to his insecurities firm. Get a nap, surveil the building across the way. He was crossing the funeral parlor lawn when a voice whispered at his shoulder and a hard object rammed his side.

  “It’s a gun, Lucas. Don’t do anything but walk, just like you’re doing.”

  “Hello, Crandell,” Lucas said, stopping, keeping his voice steady. “My, but we’re stealthy as ever.”

  “Keep walking, Lucas.”

  “Keep moving, Luke, and there’s no pain. Stop and they break.”

  Lucas moved as slowly as possible, but keeping one step ahead of disjointed fingers. The man beside him was six feet tall, dressed in a sculptured gray suit. His physique was boxy and muscular, bowed legs imparting a simian quality. The eyes were small obsidian dots, like button eyes in a doll. Like always, Crandell’s hair was perfect: waves of curly blond hair flowing from his temples.

  Lucas affected nonchalance. “You saw through my disguise, didn’t you, Crandell? I’d forgotten how good you were. My height, right? You were looking at everyone six-one, checking closer? You’re amazing, Crandell.”

  “You’ve scared a lot of people, Lucas. They’re terrified that you’re out and doing God knows what. They’ll be glad to see you and me together again.”

  “Plus it’s a big payday for you, right?”

  “I always have a big payday when we meet, Lukie-boy.”

  “Let’s see, Crandell, the last time you and I got together it was four years ago, beneath a microwave tower in a field.” Lucas winked.

  “You’re a sick boy, Lucas. Delusional. Got anger problems, problems with women. You need help.”

  Lucas looked away. Took a deep breath.

  “I’m not going back. You’ll have to shoot me here. How will you fix shooting me in a parking lot?”

  “You’ll be fine, Lucas. You just have to…resume your normal routine.”

  Lucas heard a roar of an engine and a dark boxy car jumped from the line of cars and pulled in front of him, braking hard. The door swung open. Lucas bent, smiled, looked at the driver.

  “Are you in law enforcement, sir? Crandell likes to employ from its ranks.”

  Crandell said, “Get in or I’ll put you in, Luke. It’ll hurt for days.”

  Lucas shot a last look at freedom. Or at life. No one near. Wait. Over there, a hundred feet away…walking down a line of parked cars like a man deep in thought.

  That cop. Detective…What the hell was his name?

  CHAPTER 22

  I stepped outside to check the lot, happily free of the parlor. I find contemporary funerals stunted and artificial, stage-managed by businesspeople hired to mute death’s impact. Quiet reservation is the protocol. We lose our words in whispers and walk softly on silencing carpets. If we avoid dissolving into weeping and wailing and honest emotion, we are lauded for holding up well.

  When I die, I don’t want people holding up well, I want folks shivering and shaking and dropping to the ground like an old-time revival meeting. I want floor-rolling, tongue-speaking, moon-ranting. I want poetry spoken, songs sung, hands clapped. I want people who never met me to hold the hands of those who did.

  I want truths told, balanced by beautiful lies.

  “Detective Ryder!”

  I turned to see the red-haired fan of funk who’d been talking with Haley waving in my direction. He stood beside another man, his square build and tight-curled blond hair seeming oddly familiar. Angled to the curb behind them was a dark sedan, Buick maybe. I turned and walked that way, hands in my pockets. There was a bright smile on Funk Fan’s face, but the other man’s face looked somewhere between fight and flight. When I was a half-dozen steps distant, Funky sashayed sideways.

  I said, “Whatcha need, bud?”

  The driver of the vehicle laid on the horn, a piercing blast. I grimaced. Funky laughed and backpedaled faster. I looked into the face of the curly-haired man and immediately knew him from somewhere. He recognized me at the same split-second. I saw motion at his waist, the grip of an automatic in his left hand, the hand beneath his jacket. The gun had a pig snout, a suppressor. The hand began to move. The gun emerged.

  He’s going to shoot you! my mind screamed as the gun arced upward. My weapon was shoulder-holstered under my left arm. Useless. I had one motion: go for his legs. I dove, hands outstretched, saw legs scrabbling away as I rolled, grabbing at air, at nothing. A door slammed, tires screeched. The stink of burned rubber filled the air. No shot was fired.

  Then Harry was beside me, kneeling.

  “What the hell’s going on, Carson?”

  “That guy. In the car. He had a gun. With a damn suppressor.” The words were in a voice not mine, a trembling voice.

  Harry helped me to my feet. My knees wouldn’t hold and I sat back down.

  “Who the hell was he?”

  I spun my head, looking for Funky.

  “The other guy, Harry, where’d he go?”

  “I didn’t see any other guy. I was inside and heard a car horn blare, came out to check. I see you laying on the ground, a blue sedan smoking its tires down the street, a guy pulling the door shut.”

  “The other guy was a funk fan, talked to Haley earlier. Haley didn’t know him. The guy was talking about Taneesha, the station. I was checking cars. Funk Fan yells my name and I see him standing by a hard-looking blond guy. I walk over and the car horn blows, like the driver saying, Screw it, let’s run. Funky gets a big grin and splits, and I see the other guy’s got a suppressed pistol in his hand. I think he was debating whether to crank off a round. I jumped for the gun man, ended up eating grass.”

  “I didn’t see any of that. Just you on the ground and the peeling-out vehicle.”

  “Funky used me,” I said. “I was diversion for his escape.”

  An older woman walked by on the sidewalk and shot us a nervous glance, a big black guy kneeling beside a slender white guy reclining on the lawn of a funeral parlor. I stood on improving legs. Harry and I followed the path Funky had taken. We turned a corner and saw a pillow in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “This Funky,” Harry said. “A chubby guy, right?”

  “Not any more, obviously.”

  We returned the way we came, tossed the pillow in the cruiser. It had a cotton case, soft, not a fingerprint surface.

  I ran the scene through my head again, came to one conclusion.

>   “Funky’s our boy, Harry. Taneesha’s killer. He came in disguise. And he’s got someone else after him.”

  “Could you ID him again if you saw him?”

  I shrugged. “It’s the gun-toting guy that’s bothering me, bro. I knew him. And I’m sure he knew me. Problem is, I got no name, no place. I just know the face from somewhere.”

  Harry said, “We’re never far from a surveillance camera anymore. Whole goddamn world is growing eyes. Let’s go see if any were watching.”

  The parlor had security cams, but not out front. There was a service station a half-block down the street. The chances its security cams saw anything usable from this distance were nil. Still, it had to be verified. We walked down the street toward the station, passing a ten-foot-wide storefront grocery flanking the parlor’s lot. Harry grabbed my arm, pointed at the grocery’s window.

  “Looky there, Carson.”

  I turned to the window and saw a sign proclaiming, HAM HOCKS $1.89/POUND.

  “You’re hungry?”

  “Look inside. Right up there.”

  I looked past the sign. Mounted behind the window in a corner was a small security camera pointing out to the street.

  “Odd direction for a camera,” Harry said. “Let’s check it out.”

  A bell jingled our arrival. Behind the counter a tall and slender black man in a white apron was cutting slices from a wheel of cheese. He shot us a glance. I put him in his late fifties, a touch of gray in his short natural. Another camera behind the counter watched over the twin rows of shelves running back into the store.

  Harry flashed his badge over the counter. “You the owner, sir?”

  The guy concentrated on slicing. “Naw, I’m the floor show. The owner don’t get here for another hour.”

  Harry waited it out. Finally the guy turned to us, rolled his eyes.

  “Hell yes, I’m the owner, Oliver Tapley. Who else gonna be stupid enough to work here?”

  “That camera by the window, Mr Tapley. Odd placement.”

  Tapley showed us his back again and continued sawing cheese.

  “Mr Tapley?” Harry prompted.

  Two more cheese slices fell. “I talk better when interruptions turn into customers.”

  Harry pulled his wallet. “Give us two ham and cheese on rye. Hot peppers on both, brown mustard on one.”

  Tapley lifted a baked ham from the cooler and set it on the counter. “I got two parking spaces out front. Designated just for this store, sign on the pole says so. People run in, get what they need, run out.”

  Harry said, “But other people use the spots, right?”

  Tapley scowled. “Funeral people, mostly. Fifty-six goddamn spaces in the parlor’s lot, and where do people park? On the street in front of my store.”

  “So you keep an eye out front as well as in the store?”

  “If they ain’t coming in here, I give ’em a cussin’ until they move.”

  “Does the camera out there record?”

  Tapley studied the ham like there was something fascinating on its surface. Harry sighed. “I guess we need some drinks, Mr Tapley; a root beer and a Dr Pepper.”

  Tapley whittled at the ham and assembled sandwiches. He nodded to a monitor beside the register. We had to lean over the counter to see it: a split screen, half showing the store interior, half Tapley’s prized parking slots. The cameras were a cheap setup with low image quality, like the lenses were covered with gray cheesecloth. The image didn’t extend to the area where the incident happened.

  “You shoo anyone out of your spots recently?” Harry asked.

  Tapley wrapped paper around the sandwiches, set them on the counter.

  “Maybe a half-hour back. A big-ass car pulls into my spot like it pays the rent on this place instead of me. Just sits there like waiting for something. I chased the bastard off.”

  “Do you recall what kind of car it was?” Harry asked.

  “A blue box, Detroit iron, I think; Buick? Olds?”

  “You keep the tapes, Mr Tapley?” Harry asked, barely concealing the excitement in his voice. Tapley turned away and pulled a jar of pickles from the case. He inspected it carefully, turning it round and round.

  Harry spun to a shelf at his back, grabbed an armload of items at random, threw them beside the register.

  “We’ll take this stuff, too.”

  Tapley went to the rear and returned with a videocassette. He racked the tape to the approximate time frame, handed us the control, then wandered off to fetch items for an elderly woman. I thumbed fast-forward. On the in-store side of the screen, customers came and went in comedic jitters. Outside the spaces stood empty, vehicles blurring by in the traffic lane.

  “There,” Harry yelled. “Pause it.”

  I stopped, rewound. Hit play. Empty spaces in front of the store, an occasional car passing. The blue sedan, a Buick, glided in dead center, hogging both spaces. Nothing to see, the Buick’s windows opaque with tint.

  We held our breaths as the passenger door opened. Curly slid out, finger-brushed his hair back, walked toward the parlor. He was in frame two seconds, one and a half with his hand between the lens and his face. The image was grainy, blurred.

  “Way too brief,” I said. “But he’s so familiar it’s agonizing.”

  We gave Tapley a receipt for the tape, headed outside, me carrying the cassette and sandwiches, Harry lugging a paper bag. He reached into the bag and produced one of the items grabbed haphazardly from the shelf, a purse-size pack of tampons. According to the package they were “Scented For That Springtime Feel!”

  “Lawd,” was all he could manage.

  CHAPTER 23

  We fought the traffic to Forensics, out by the campus of University of South Alabama. Hembree was at a meeting, due out in twenty minutes. I told Harry I was heading over to the morgue and he opted to keep company with a half-full box of doughnuts in the Forensic Bureau’s employee lounge.

  Clair was at her desk, book in hand, her lanyarded reading glasses in place. She hadn’t heard me walking the hall, and I watched her read for a few moments: study the page, lick the tip of her china-smooth thumb, lift the edge of a page, turn the page as she moved the book slightly to the left so as to begin reading before the page was fully flat on the left-hand side of the book. Efficient. She even anticipated the wetting process, pink tongue tip slipping out as her thumb lifted.

  After a minute of study, I cleared my throat. Stepped to the threshold.

  “Hi, Clair. What’s got your attention? A tome on bullet wounds? Blowflies?”

  Her neck reddened with embarrassment. Grimacing, she held up a tattered paperback romance novel, the cover illustration of a muscular and shirtless man staring into the eyes of a raven-haired woman in Victorian garb, wind-whipped trees in the background, like a typhoon was blowing through. The title was A Storm of Passion.

  “Clair?” I asked. “Are you studying meteorology?”

  She tossed the book to her desk. It fell front cover up. She quickly turned it over.

  “Idiot things. My aunt goes through them like candy, then gives them to me. Not to read, Ryder, to pass on. There are a couple women in the office who scoop them up the second I set them in the break room.”

  “You weren’t reading?”

  “I picked it up two seconds before you walked in. Read maybe a half-paragraph. Infantile stuff. Enough chit-chat, my lunch hour’s almost over. What do you need?”

  “You did a post on the woman burned in the fire, the one with her hands cuffed behind her back?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I was on my way to work that morning, saw the fire, headed over. I was there when she was discovered, took a look at the scene, what was left. It’s just a passing interest.”

  “She was savaged,” Clair said. “There’s no other way of putting it.”

  “Explain.”

  Clair pushed aside A Storm of Passion, snapped a sheaf of papers from her desk.

  “Here, you know enough medical
terminology …read about it yourself.”

  She handed me the preliminary autopsy report. I sat, flicked on the light beside the chair, started reading. After a long three minutes, I handed the report back. My stomach felt like I’d eaten a sack of cockroaches.

  “Whoever did that is a sado-sexual terrorist. Someone who despises women. The word sick doesn’t even kick it off.”

  “The flesh was deeply burned, as you noted. But the insides could still tell part of the story. Especially the damage to the vagina and uterus, what remained, that is.”

  “All while she was alive?” I asked.

  “While I was performing the autopsy I kept praying she’d passed out at some point, missed the worst. What do you think, Carson? You’re experienced here.”

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead with my fingertips. “From what I know, Clair, it’s often the agony that keeps the perpetrator torturing the victim. If the victim passes out, the perp loses interest. Her mouth was probably taped so no one could hear.”

  “Where do monsters like this come from, Carson?” she asked, her voice a whisper. “Can people be born with broken souls?”

  “They’re not born, Clair. They’re made. And in many ways they’re barely a step distant from us.”

  “Now there’s an ugly thought. There was torture with the woman in your case, Ryder. The Franklin woman. Think there’s a link?”

  “Ms Franklin’s fingers were broken. It’s sad to say, but on a torture index, she got off much lighter than Ms Hibney. Ms Franklin was in her car, Ms Hibney at home. Ms Franklin appeared to be a crime of opportunity, Ms Hibney’s death probably involved planning.”

  “So they’re not related.”

  “Anything’s possible in freakland,” I said. “Could be our boy liked sticking Taneesha Franklin with a knife and breaking her fingers. He just cranked it up a couple notches with Ms Hibney. Who showed up at her autopsy?”

  “Detectives Logan and Shuttles.” She frowned. “Detective Shuttles asked interesting questions, sharp. Kid’s got a future. Logan did like he always does.”

  “Which is?”

  “Sit in the chair behind me and stare at my ass.”