Pernicious

by Henderson, James

  Pernicious

  Copyright©2010 By James Edward Henderson

  Prologue

  “Would you please get into the boat!”

  Willie wanted to say, “Damn that and damn you! I’m not doing it! I told you I didn’t want to go!”

  Instead he got into the boat, shaking, terrified.

  “Get the paddle,” she ordered, “and push us off!”

  “I can’t see it,” not making an attempt to search.

  He heard her grinding her teeth; she was getting pissed, as before, when he declined her offer to go fishing at night.

  “Let’s go fishing,” she’d said, casual, an impromptu inclination.

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Now! In the dark! At night?”

  “Yes, at night. A guy told me the catfish were biting exceptionally well at night. He said he caught a thirty-pound catfish. Can you imagine…a thirty-pound catfish!”

  Willie could not imagine, nor did he care, even if the catfish were weighing a hundred pounds and handing out fifty-dollar bills.

  “Hell no! I’m not going! I’ll stay here, get the grease good and hot before you come back.”

  “Get ready!”

  He couldn’t swim, and she knew it.

  He’d told her several times he feared water, that his lifelong phobia was drowning, as a small boy he didn’t even jump in puddles.

  And how could she forget their first disastrous fishing expedition. That day the sun was shining hot and bright and the fish were biting.

  Willie Davis didn’t catch one of the fifty or so perch caught; he was too busy holding onto either side of the flat-bottom aluminum boat, in morbid fear of it toppling over. He’d held on so tightly and so long that when she finally paddled back to the bank, his hands were locked in an arthritic grip. She’d yelled and cursed, calling him everything in the book, an asshole to a zero.

  Now he was back in the very same boat he’d promised himself he would never get back into again.

  “Would you please get the paddle,” Perry said.

  “Serious, baby, I don’t see it.”

  “Willie,” voice soft and pleasant, “could you feel around and find the paddle?” Shouting: “If you don’t fucking mind!”

  Searching for it he stuck his finger on a fishhook. “Oww!”

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “I stuck myself.”

  He sounded like a small boy, which he’d intended, thinking it might make her angrier and she’d say, “To shit with this!” and they would go home, with her cursing all the while.

  She didn’t; she just groaned.

  Willie wondered why he put up with her. It was her way or the highway. It was also her cars, her house, her furniture, her everything.

  The only contribution he’d presented in their four-month-old relationship was himself.

  Yet she’d insisted they marry, despite his penury, his drug addiction, and his social affliction, an STD, which he hadn’t gotten around to discussing but knew she had to have known.

  Willie finally found the paddle and handed it to her. She snatched it and threw it at him.

  “Ow! Why you do that?”

  “Paddle with it! What you giving it to me for?”

  “I’m scared, Perry.” He didn’t mean to say it quite like that, though it was true.

  “I’m scared, Perry!” she mocked. “I’m scared! What you wanna do, huh? Run home to your damn mammy, suck her wrinkled titty? Let me tell you something, Mr. Davis, it’s high time you started acting like a man, a real man! Now paddle!”

  He did, wondering what fishing at night had to do with manhood, wondering if his mother was right: “She’s trouble, son. Nothing but trouble! I can see it in her eyes.”

  He couldn’t see those eyes now, nor could he clearly distinguish his surroundings. A gray haze enfolded them, mingled with a miasma of putrid fish. Above was a bridge, Interstate 440, some fifty feet high, cars and trucks whizzing by, people heading to and from Little Rock.

  Willie felt cold, though the temperature bottomed at sixty degrees.

  A bug droned close, a cicada. Willie envisioned a water moccasin, a large water moccasin.

  What if, he thought, it slithered into the boat?

  Then what? Dive into the water…or manhandle a giant water moccasin? He shuddered at the thought.

  It occurred to him that no one knew they’d come out here in the middle of night to catch a funky fish. He could die out here and no one would ever know.

  Perry stood up, and immediately he stopped paddling and grabbed either side of the boat.

  “This oughta be a good spot,” she said. “Bait your hook.”

  Willie didn’t budge, just waited anxiously for her to sit down. Why is she standing? Why can’t she sit down like I’m doing?

  Bait my hook? I can’t even see the pole, much less a stupid hook. What if the boat flips? Would she really save me like she said she would?

  What the hell am I doing out here?

  “Perry, would you please sit down!”

  The boat rocked. “Is this worrying you, Willie?” He held on tighter. “Willie the worrier.”

  Her voice sounded different, the tone unfamiliar. Something’s seriously wrong!

  “Willie the worrier with the witty-bitty worm!”

  Willie tried to make out her face, wanting to see her expression, hoping to get a better idea of her mindset…he saw only a silhouette, backlit by the half moon behind her, arms akimbo.

  “Feeling seasick, are you?” the silhouette asked, rocking the boat yet again, almost sending him over.

  “The hell wrong with you?”

  The boat tilted right…left…right…

  “Hold on, Willie!”

  The paddle rested on his feet; he could grab it, whack her upside the head and then paddle back to the bank…To do that he would have to let go.

  “Perry, please!” The boat rocked sharply to his left, and he counterbalanced his weight right…The backswing caught him leaning…He screamed, and before he knew it he was in the water.

  The dark, black abyss, his most dreaded fear.

  He attacked it, wildly, desperately, not realizing he was in three feet of water.

  “Mama!” he screamed, arms and legs flailing. “Mama! Mama, help me! Mama!…”

  Behind him the silhouette, standing, the water a little more than knee high, walked then ran toward the bank.

  “Ma-ma!…Ma-ma!…M-m-ma-ma!…” His voice an eerie gurgle.

  The boat, bottom side up, floated no more than a few feet away from the commotion. Closer, an arm’s length away, a cypress tree stump rooted deep and solid, the bark carved with Seiridium cankers into footholds.

  “Ma-ma!…Ma-maaaaa!” He went under, and somehow managed to resurface. “M-m-maaaaa!”

  He went under again…This time he did not reappear. Bubbles percolated on the surface…and then nothing.

  Chapter 1

  The phone rang.

  “Homicide,” Bob said, and his face contorted into a grimace. “It’s her again.”

  Tasha, just returning from two-weeks vacation, stared at her partner, puzzled. “Who?” she whispered.

  Bob handed her the receiver. “Deal with it.”

  “Detective Montgomery. How may I help you?”

  “Are you a sister?” the caller said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m also a detective. How may I help you?”

  “Thank God!” the caller exclaimed. “Finally someone who can help.”

  “Ma’am, how may I help you?”

  “My son…he…was murdered!”

  Tasha reached for a pen and pad. “Ma’am, may I get your full name?”

  “Doris Davis.”


  “Okay, Mrs. Davis,” scribbling the name, “you say your son was murdered, correct?”

  “Uh-huh, he sure was.”

  “Your son’s name?” Tasha looked up at Bob in front of her desk, shaking his head emphatically. She cuffed the phone. “What’s the problem?”

  Bob ran a finger across his neck.

  “You hear me? I said Willie Davis.”

  Tasha started to ask for more info when Bob slid a note across her desk. It read: She’s a kook.

  “My boy,” the caller said, crying now, “never hurt nobody…never…not once. I raised him well. That so-called wife of his killed him. She’s a low-down--”

  “Mrs. Davis, why don’t I take your number and get back with you?”

  “Yeah, sure. You know how many times you people have told me that?”

  “Mrs. Davis, I’ll be in touch. Good-bye now.”

  “Detective, do you have kids?”

  This subject was off limits; Tasha didn’t discuss her personal life on the job.

  “Obviously you do,” the caller said. “Imagine how you would feel if someone bamboozled your son into marriage and then murdered him. Imagine you telling the police and they not lifting a finger to do anything about your son’s murder. Can you imagine all that, Detective Montgomery?”

  “Good-bye,” Tasha said, and terminated the call. She stared at Bob, now at his desk, avoiding her gaze. “What was that about?”

  “How was your vacation?”

  Tasha didn’t answer.

  “Just a grandma. She’s convinced her boy was murdered by his wife.”

  “Was he?”

  “Hell no. His mother can’t handle the truth, calling every day, three times a day, the last two weeks. She was pestering the detectives in county and they sicced her on us.”

  “She sure seemed convinced. Had me wanting to investigate. You’ve already looked into it, right?”

  Bob gave her a look. “For your information, Detective Montgomery, her boy died in a boating accident. He was fishing in Fourche Creek at night without a lifejacket.”

  “Calm down, Bob. Don’t knot your hemorrhoids. The woman sounds convincing.”

  “Yes, she does. The autopsy report and the investigating detective’s report sound just as convincing.”

  “The wife wasn’t with him when the accident occurred?”

  “According to her statement she was at home.”

  “I guess someone will have to convince the mother.”

  “She’s delusional.”

  Captain Franklin, the shift commander, stepped into the office. “I’ve got one for you guys,” he said. “Thirteenth and High Street.” He started out, stopped. “Why are you two still here?”

  The two detectives rose immediately, Bob holstering a revolver, Tasha inserting a pen and pad in her jacket.

  Bob said, “Tash, what if Cap asks where’s your weapon?”

  “I’ll tell him the truth.”

  “You left it at home.”

  “The truth.”

  Minutes later they were inside a brown Taurus, Bob driving. “I hope this is a dunker,” he said. “We’re ten and one right now. It’ll be nice to go eleven and one. Would break our old record.”

  Tasha nodded in agreement, though she no longer kept score. She’d had too many sleepless nights worrying about cases that simply couldn’t be solved. Her mindset now: If she and Bob cleared a case, great; if they did not, not good, but no reason to seek therapy, as long as they did everything humanly possible to solve the case.

  “You know,” she said, staring at a small crowd waiting at the bus stop, “that woman really had me convinced her son was murdered.” A Central Arkansas Transit bus pulled up and blocked her view.

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “Me, too. At first.”

  “I think we should take another look, see if anything was missed during the initial investigation?”

  Bob groaned. “Geez, Tash, you just got back from vacation and you’re ready to jump feet first into a frivolous investigation.”

  “Relax. I just think we should check and make sure all the dots were connected, that’s all. We don’t have to put it into our official record book.”

  “You look into it. If you find anything interesting, call me.”

  “Play-it-safe Bob strikes again.”

  “You know my motto: If it ain’t broke, claim credit for it.”

  Tasha laughed. Bob had said this two years ago, when she was a rookie homicide detective, when it was unlikely the two would survive one day as partners.

  The second she laid eyes on Bob, Tasha thought the brass were deliberately discouraging her from joining the ranks of homicide.

  He was her exact opposite: white, grossly overweight, rude, chauvinistic, and he chewed tobacco.

  Within the hour of their pairing, Tasha told Bob, “I’m not your gal, and the next time you call me that I’m going to stuff that Stetson up your fat butt!”

  At Fourteenth and High, a block short of the crime scene, Tasha got out of the car and started toward the small crowd converged on the scene.

  Someone, she hoped, was experiencing a bad case of diarrhea of the mouth. Through the legs of several onlookers she could see only the victim’s legs, one resting on the street, shoeless, the other propped up on the curb.

  That can wait.

  Death disturbed her. Senseless murder gave her migraines.

  Often the vic was a young African American male, mired in drugs or gangs, leaving behind small children and a host of friends and family who well knew the ultimate conclusion of his lifestyle, yet expressed shock and disbelief when told their son, brother, father, partner, husband, boyfriend was murdered.

  The endless, indefensible carnage unsettled Tasha’s worldview, made her wonder if the notions of race, religion, and human kindness were inane ideals, Pollyanna pulp and mental malarkey glossing over the fact man routinely and inexplicably behaved badly, like animals, and maimed and killed each other.

  Investigating countless homicides had also caused her self-doubt: could she pull the trigger? Send a tissue-damaging round through a human being? End someone’s life?

  Each night she prayed the situation would never arise.

  Each day she left her weapon at home.

  Tasha glimpsed Bob through the crowd, meticulously inspecting evidence, mentally photographing everything and everyone on the scene.

  “What’s up?” Tasha asked no one in particular.

  A fat teenager with a thick gold chain around his neck said, “What does it look like?”

  “You tell me.”

  The teenager rolled his eyes and moved toward the front of the crowd blocked by yellow tape.

  “A girl was killed,” said a young boy on a bicycle, working a toothpick in his mouth.

  “Who was she?”

  “Linda Fay, neighborhood crackhead,” the boy said. “She lives down thata way. You the police, ain’t you?”

  Tasha nodded. “What’s the word?”

  “Nothing much. She was riding with Babyboy and Jenno earlier. Babyboy’s tax refund came in. Looks like they dropped her off here.”

  Wow, Tasha thought, this kid should be on the force.

  “Tell me where you live and I’ll stop by later. No one will know I talked to you.”

  The boy chuckled and removed the toothpick. “Who I look like? Elmer Fudd?”

  Tasha smiled at him, not wanting him to get loud.

  “Tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll ride through the neighborhood on my bike. I get to Jenno’s house I’ll pop a wheelie.”

  Tasha wanted to hug him. “Let me get a car.”

  As promised, he rode his bike, Tasha tailing in the Taurus, ten blocks to a modest single-story home, where he pulled back on the handlebars and executed the perfect wheelie.

  Tasha slowed to a crawl and wrote down the address and license numbers of the two vehicles parked at the location: a green-and-white Ford truck, parked in front on the grass, and a black late-model Mon
te Carlo, parked adjacent to the house, almost in the backyard.

  Tasha radioed the information.

  The dispatcher reported that the house and the truck belonged to a Bobby Grayson, a sixty-three-year-old African American male; no prior offenses. The Monte Carlo belonged to a Barry Grayson, aka Jenno, a twenty-six-year-old African American male with three drug convictions.

  “Bingo,” Tasha said.

  Back at the crime scene the crowd had dispersed, the body loaded in a coroner van, yellow tape removed, several uniforms milling around talking and laughing.

  Bob was sitting on the curb eating a sandwich.

  “Lunch?” Tasha asked.

  “Brunch,” Bob replied between bites. “You want one? I got two.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “What you got?”

  “Ham-and-cheese.”

  “The vic, Bob.”

  “Linda Faye. Female, late teens or early twenties. Gunshot wound in the head. Large caliber, forty-four or something close to it. Multiple contusions prior to death.”

  “Roughed up pretty bad, huh?”

  “Uh-huh. Then he or she, probably he, drove her here and pushed her out. Classic body-dump. Extremely difficult to investigate.” He reached inside the breast pocket of a brown suede jacket and retrieved another sandwich, unwrapped it, and chomped half in one bite. “Where you and the kid go?”

  “Let’s go talk to a suspect.”

  Bob stopped chewing. “What?” He stood up. “Who?”

  “Barry Grayson. Jenno, to those who love and admire him. The kid nailed him. Let’s go.”

  “Fantastic.”

  As Tasha and Bob and two cruisers were approaching the house, the Monte Carlo backed out of the driveway.

  Bob sped up and pulled in front of it, blocking the exit. The passenger door swung open, and out jumped a lanky, wide-eyed young man, who stared at them for a second, then took off in a mad run.

  “Halt, police!” Bob shouted, exiting the car as fast as he could.

  “Police!” Tasha yelled, knowing the man wouldn’t stop.

  “Get the driver!” shouted one of the uniforms, running ahead in hot pursuit. “I got this one!”

  “Good luck,” Tasha called after him.

  The driver got out with both hands raised high.