The Body Box

by Lynn Abercrombie

  “Mysterious stranger strikes again,” Gooch said.

  “What next?”

  “Victim One,” Gooch said. “Gerald Bokus, age 7. Disappeared from a battered women’s shelter down in Columbus, November 12, 1987.”

  Lt. Gooch scooped up the files, dropped them on my lap. “You read. I’ll drive.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Columbus is the biggest town in the southwestern part of the Georgia, which is not saying much. Southwest Georgia is five times the size of the state of Massachusetts and has a population smaller than, say, Birmingham. The only thing of note anywhere near Columbus is Fort Benning, the huge Army base.

  Lt. Gooch had already set up an appointment with the detective who had worked the case. He was a white man, close to retirement, who looked like he’d spent most of his law-enforcement career eating chicken-fried steak at the café across the street from the police station. His short-sleeved mint-green polyester shirt bulged and creased as it strained to contain the rolls and ridges of fat inside it. His brown clip-on tie was held down with a tie tack shaped like one of those fish that people put on the backs of their cars to advertise what good Christians they are. The air conditioning was working overtime against the July heat, but the underarms of his shirt were dark with sweat.

  “Nert Clemmiger,” he said, sticking out his hand to Lt. Gooch.

  “Nert?” I said.

  “Short for Albert,” he said, grinning and shaking my hand. I was tempted to ask for a more point-to-point explanation of how you got from Albert to Nert, but figured that I might save that conversational gambit for a rainy day.

  Nert Clemmiger took us back to an interview room and sat us down.

  “Atlanta!” he said enthusiastically. “The big city! Yessir!”

  Lt. Gooch didn’t say a word in response to this, but the expression on his face didn’t seem complimentary, so I jumped in, and me and Nert had a fulsome conversation about the weather and the pros and cons of big city law-enforcement careers and the various kinds of pastries that were available within walking distance of the police station here in Columbus and what impact each pastry had had on the various diets that Nert had gone on and how each of the various diets had ultimately and miserably failed and what a fine church Nert had been affiliated with for the past twenty-one years and how there were several colored families who attended there and how just—what was it? last month? no the month before—the church had brought in a colored gentleman, a preacher from somewhere up in Tennessee, who had preached probably the most informative sermon on the subject of speaking in tongues that Nert had ever heard in his life.

  By this point Lt. Gooch was looking—in his singularly expressionless way—like he was about ready to strangle Detective Nert Clemmiger.

  “Lt. Gooch?” I said. “With the schedule we’re on, you maybe want to fill Detective Clemmiger in on what we’re doing here.”

  “Nert! Please, call me Nert! By all means.”

  “Nert.” Lt. Gooch stroked his jaw. “Delicate thing. We’re working a case up in Atlanta. Fellow by the name of Elliot Strickland.” This was the first I’d ever heard of Elliot Strickland. “We got us a, ah, I wouldn’t even call him a suspect. Potential suspect. We’re evaluating that. No criminal record. But we did learn he was a witness or possibly even a suspect in a murder case down here back in 1987. What was the name of that case, Sergeant Deakes?”

  “I’ve got it right here,” I said, going along with his pretense. I flipped open my notebook. “Bokus. Gerald Bokus.”

  Nert thought about it for a minute. “Aw, yeah. What a goshawful heartbreaker. Them child cases are the worst ones, don’t y’all agree?” He then proceeded to tell us in some detail about every child murder he’d ever investigated.

  “Uh-huh.” Lt. Gooch finally managed to interrupt his monologue. “But here’s who we’re looking at. Fellow by the name of Doyle Ray Anderson. Says here he was employed as a painter back in 1987. Came around the place where Gerald was living.”

  Nert Clemmiger frowned. “Anderson? Don’t ring a bell.”

  Lt. Gooch pulled the file out of his Samsonite briefcase, opened it to the one-paragraph witness statement signed by Nert Clemmiger himself. Nert studied it for a moment. Finally he looked up. “Mind my asking how y’all got your hands on this here file?”

  Lt. Gooch looked at me blankly. “The DA, wasn’t it?”

  “Ah . . . yes,” I said. “I think that’s right. Fulton County DA’s office gave it to us.”

  “Where’d they get it?”

  Lt. Gooch shrugged vaguely. “I ast the gal over there to punch in this boy Anderson, this here’s what come up. The case, I mean. Not the file.”

  “Yeah, but how’d this get in your computer? This ain’t even on our computer.”

  The lieutenant and I both shrugged vaguely. “Maybe they borrowed it or something,” I said. “DA-to-DA type thing.”

  “One thing I can tell you,” Lt. Gooch said. “I don’t know a goddamn thing about computers.”

  Nert’s eyes narrowed, slightly disapproving now that Lt. Gooch was taking the Lord’s name in vain. But then he looked down at the file. “Tell you the truth, I don’t hardly remember this fellow.” He kept staring. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, I remember. The boy’s mother said this Anderson fellow had come around, played with the boy a couple times. Something about him she didn’t like. So I talked to him.”

  “But nothing came of it?”

  “That woman, I don’t mean to speak ill of her. But she was a no-count type of individual. I felt pretty sure she was covering for the boyfriend. There was a history of physical abuse, whatnot. Nothing serious, but the boyfriend had been took down to the station a few times. You book him in, give him a little talking-to, then she comes and drops the charges, calls you all kind of nasty names for arresting her man. You know how that is.” He shook his head sadly. “But I never could make a case against him. Never had the evidence.”

  “You say a history of abuse?” I said. “You’re not talking sexual abuse, are you?”

  “Nah, nah, nothing like that. He slapped her around, is all.”

  “So this guy Doyle Ray Anderson . . .” I said.

  Nert glanced at the witness report again. “Looks like he had him an alibi.”

  “Anything strike you about him? Anything in particular?”

  “Not really. My recollection he was a friendly type fellow. Likable. Real dry wit, if you know what I mean. Liked to joke around a little.”

  “You track down his employment, alibi, that type thing?” the lieutenant asked.

  “I honestly couldn’t tell you.” Nert looked at the report again. “He worked for a painting contractor.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Says right here: ‘Subject drove white Ford van with Allgood Painting painted on the side.’ ”

  “And that was good enough for you?” the lieutenant said.

  “Like I say, I got on pretty good with him. He didn’t seem . . .” Nert squinted thoughtfully. “Yeah, now I think about it, he went out of his way to help. Had some law-enforcement experience, as I recall, and so he was good with dates, times, things like that. Made it easy on you.”

  “You’re saying he was a cop? Before going into house painting?”

  Nert shrugged. “Something along those lines.”

  “That’s kind of coming down in the world, isn’t it?” I said. “Cop to house painter?”

  Nert looked at me curiously. “I don’t know how much y’all get paid up in Atlanta. I guess y’all got the union and everything. But most small-town cops—not here in Columbus maybe, but out in them tiny little burgs?—painting houses is a whale of a lot more lucrative than law-enforcement work. I got a buddy, he’s chief of police over in Rayburn, the city council wants him to hire another policeman, they give him a budget of $14,400. You believe that? Fourteen-four! This economy, you can’t hire a retard with a criminal record for fourteen-four. But that’s how it is. These dadgum politicians, boy,
they want police protection, but they don’t have the stuffing to ask the voters for the funding to pay for it. Why I knew this fellow over in Alabama who—”

  Lt. Gooch spoke up for the first time in several minutes, cutting off what had the makings of another fifteen-minute monologue. “So why’d you think he had been a cop, Nert? This Doyle Ray Anderson.”

  “Honestly? I can’t remember. Guess he just seemed familiar with procedure, terminology. Like I say, it was just an impression.” Nert grinned. “But you run into them types from time to time, people that watch all the shows on TV. Cops, America’s Most Wanted, CSI, read all them books about crime, whatnot? It’s just a hobby. Sometimes those folks know about as much as your average street cop, procedure-wise, information-wise, whatnot. He could of been one of them.”

  “You never asked, though.”

  Nert apparently didn’t like the lieutenant’s tone. “Hoss, I done told you. It was twelve years ago.”

  As we drove away, I said, “Who’s Elliot Strickland?”

  There was a long pause. “What?”

  “Elliot Strickland. You told Nert back there that we were working the Elliot Strickland case.”

  “I made that up.”

  “Uh-huh.” It hadn’t taken us long to get outside of Columbus and into the country. “It’s just it had the sound of a real name.”

  “He’s my father-in-law.”

  “I didn’t know you were married.”

  “I’m not.”

  I waited for a while in the distant hope that this cloudburst of self-revelation might rain a little more. But it didn’t.

  “So,” I said finally. “There’s no Elliot Strickland case that you haven’t bothered to tell me about?”

  “Nope.”

  “What did we learn back there?”

  “Why I left the little dipshit town I’se born in and never went back.” The tires hummed beneath us. We were driving through a long, monotonous stretch of dark pine forest unrelieved by houses or fields or much of anything. After a few miles, Lt. Gooch added. “Jesus God, I thought that fat little sumbitch’d never shut up.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to loosen him up.”

  This brought no response.

  “Was it okay? That I asked most of the questions? I don’t mean to be, you know, horning in on your territory or whatever. I just thought I’d developed some rappport.”

  Lt. Gooch squinted at the road. “You did fine.”

  “Careful now,” I said. “You’re gonna spoil me in a minute.”

  Lt. Gooch rolled down the window, spit some tobacco juice into the hot wind.

  NINETEEN

  Next stop was La Grange, a little county seat down near the Alabama border. The downtown has a nice square with a pretty fountain and big statute of General Lafayette, who had supposedly passed through the area briefly, gazing thoughtfully out at the horizon like some guy in a menswear commercial. La Grange didn’t have that used-up, falling-apart quality of some of the towns in southern Georgia, but it wasn’t exactly humming with activity either.

  We came into the police station and left our names with the receptionist, who said that a Detective Jennings would be out shortly.

  The man who came out, however, had a small plastic pin on his shirt that said CHIEF OF POLICE. His eyes were a cool green, and he wore a uniform that was as pressed and crisp as your average Marine Corps gunnery sergeant’s.

  “I’m Chief Brunson.” He glared at us and didn’t offer his hand. “Come back to my office.” He turned and quick-marched down a short hallway, through a door with his name stenciled on it in big gold letters. His full name was John Wayne Brunson.

  We followed him through the door.

  “Sit,” Brunson snapped.

  Lt. Gooch folded his arms, remained standing. “My appointment was with Detective Jennings, Chief,” he said.

  “Let’s get something straight right now, Lieutenant . . . What was your name again?”

  “Gooch.”

  “Lt. Gooch. Let’s get something straight. I’m a stickler for chain of command.” I appeared to be so far down on the totum pole as not to be worthy of a glance from the Chief. “Interdepartmental matters are my prerogative. If you wish to speak to Detective Jennings, then you make your request to me first. That’s how it’s done in this department.”

  “I spent twelve years in the United States Army, Chief.” Lt. Gooch stood for a moment longer, then finally sat. I guess he saw the wisdom of not turning this into a pissing contest right off the bat. Gooch smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it showed a couple of his teeth, and the ends of his mouth turned upwards a little. “I’m all for chain of command.”

  “Good.” The Chief of Police didn’t smile back. His desk was completely clean, not a paper, not a book, not a speck of lint on it. The only decorations in the room were a row of black baseball caps on the wall, each of them with a message embroidered on the crown in gold letters. One read CID, one read CHIEF’S TACTICAL UNIT, one read CHIEF OF POLICE. A rack full of weapons, lightly oiled, lay in wait in a glass case behind him: a shortened version of the M-16, a scoped sniper rifle of some sort, an MP5 submachine gun, and a shotgun with a pistol grip.

  “You were CID in the Army,” Lt. Gooch said. It wasn’t a question. I wasn’t sure what CID was.

  “I’m not here to swap stories about the good old days, Lieutenant.” The Chief looked at his watch. “Now I hate to disappoint you, but you’ll just have to head on back to Atlanta.”

  “Now wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said. “We came all the way down here to talk to Detective Jennings on a very urgent matter. If this is about requests and chain of command and so on, fine. Here we are. We’re making our request right now. Chief, if it’s okay with you, we’d like to speak to Detective Jennings.”

  The Chief’s cold green eyes looked at me for the first time. “Young lady,” Chief Brunson said, “I was talking to your superior. I’d just as soon you not interrupt our conversation.”

  I was about to come up out of the chair, but Lt. Gooch reached over and put his hand on my arm. “If you’re going to speak to my assistant, Chief,” he said, “I’d commend you to address her as Detective while you do so.”

  The Chief locked stares with Lt. Gooch. Gooch had something approximating a smile on his face. But the smile hadn’t made it to his eyes.

  “Now. My assistant, Detective Deakes, makes a good point,” Lt. Gooch said. “No time like the present. We’re here, we’d like make a request to speak to Detective Jennings.”

  “I’ll need a written request, I’m afraid.” The Chief broke out a windy smile for this one. “On stationery. Properly authorized by your superiors.”

  Lt. Gooch raised his head a notch. “Ah,” he said. “Written.” Then he turned to me. “You know what CID is?”

  “No, I don’t, Lieutenant.”

  “Criminal Investigation Division. It’s the Army’s detective bureau. CID is where they park the boys who ain’t got the balls to be actual soldiers.”

  The Chief’s face stiffened.

  Lt. Gooch’s voice was a soft, casual drawl. “See all that gear back there, Detective Deakes?” The lieutenant pointed at the gun case. “Them machine guns and stuff? I sense that the small-time third-rate bureaucrat holding down the desk in front of us is one of these characters who likes playing Army. Probably goes out and trains with the SWAT boys, got him a little tailored black uniform, goes to all kind of FBI seminars about counter-sniper techniques and whatnot. But you know what? It don’t matter a hill of beans.” Lt. Gooch smiled, and this time it was a pleasant, broad smile. “Because he’s a weak, sneaky little desk jockey, and all the sniper rifles in the world won’t change that.”

  The Lieutenant stood.

  Chief Brunson glared up at us, smiling tautly. “Lieutenant, I think we can skip the formalities. I’m denying your request right here and now.”

  We headed for the door.

  “Oh, and Lieutenant?” Chief Bruns
on had his arms crossed now, leaning back in his chair. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”

  Lt. Gooch looked back with his empty blue eyes, like he was looking at a bug maybe. “Nope.”

  The chief pointed his finger. “I know you. I can’t place you right now, but I know I’ve dealt with you before. I remember you because you had some kind of stink on you. It may take me awhile, I’m going to figure it out.”

  We went back to the car and I said, “Well, this is just me, boss, but I thought you did a nice job of apple-polishing in there. Stroked his ego a little. Really softened him up. I expect we’ll get good cooperation from him as we move forward with this investigation.”

  Lt. Gooch mumbled something, stared out the window at the statue of General Lafayette.

  We ate a silent dinner at a café near the square, then drove aimlessly around for a while, taking a tour of all the two-lane roads in the county. I sensed that Gooch had something in mind, but I figured I’d save my breath and not bother asking. Around six-fifteen we pulled up in front of a small brick ranch house with a ten-year-old Chrysler minivan and a worn-out old muscle car parked out front. A yellow mutt was chained up under a shade tree, sleeping. “Who’s this?” I said.

  “Who you think?” Lt. Gooch said, getting out of the car.

  I followed him up to the door. The mutt under the tree looked up at us, then went back to his rest. Lt. Gooch knocked, and a white woman with wispy brown hair and an apprehensive squint answered the door. “Yes?”

  “Lieutenant Gooch and Detective Deakes from the Atlanta Police Department,” the lieutenant said. “I wonder if we might speak to your husband, Miz Jennings.”

  The squinty Mrs. Jennings let her gaze glance off me briefly, then said, “Hold on.” The door closed, and there was some muffled talking, then the door opened again.