A Visible Darkness

by Jonathon King

  She must have seen the frown on my face. “You saw the burglar bars on the windows?”

  “And the deadbolt and chain on the front door,” I said.

  “The utility room door leading to the carport is the only other entry not covered. The bolt was tight. Even the chain was hooked. But the crime scene guys studied the shit out of it this time,” she said, and I could see her eyes taking on the grayer cast that came with either anger or challenge.

  “The clips on the jalousie panes, four of them, had recently been bent out, and then back.”

  “Which means he put them back?”

  “Carefully. Took his time. Had to figure both of them were dead and he had time to cover.”

  “Jesus.”

  I thought about Gary Heidnik in North Philly. Heidnik was a self-styled minister who’d been abducting mentally handicapped women for years and keeping them chained in his basement. When police finally discovered his “house of horrors,” they found one woman still alive and body parts of another in his freezer. Each day his neighbors saw him. Each day he carefully locked up his house to go out. Each day, careful and meticulous like a business.

  “So that’s the husband?” I asked, hooking my thumb to the body bag. “It doesn’t fit my guy’s motive or yours, going after a couple.”

  “Boyfriend,” she said, and she couldn’t keep a sardonic smile from pulling at the corners of her mouth.

  “Excuse me?”

  “George Harris is, was, Ms. Thompson’s boyfriend. He lived three blocks away. A widower. She’d been seeing him for about a year.” Richards was flipping through a narrow notebook. “Younger man. Seventy-four.”

  Ms. Thompson was closer to eighty. She was in the same generation as the others on Billy’s list. Her living arrangement didn’t bother me. It was the change. If this was meant to be part of the string, the guy had screwed up on his surveillance. Which meant he was slipping.

  “So the killer comes in, thinking she’s all alone and gets surprised?” I said.

  “Ms. Thompson says George was very discreet,” Richards said, but her eyes were past me, caught by something out past the front window.

  Outside one of the cops was having an arms-crossed discussion with two black women on the curb. One already had her hands up on her hips, not a good sign. The other was trying to see past him, as if just a glimpse of her friend inside might change the mask of worry on her face. I turned back to Richards.

  “So, have you got anyone on the paper trail? The insurance?”

  “That’s why you’re here, Freeman,” she said. “You and Billy already have an inside track on that. You could find out a hell of a lot faster than we could. If it fits with your theory, it’s a whole different case. But I’m not going to bring this whole idea to Hammonds without a more solid connection.”

  She was a good detective, willing to look at the long odds if there was a possibility, but smart enough to play the game by the book. It was something I had never learned.

  “Give me Ms. Thompson’s date of birth and social security number and we’ll work it,” I said.

  She was already tearing a slip from her pad, and looking back outside.

  “Thanks, Max,” she said, moving now to the front door.

  When she left I wandered back through the house. It had the same feeling as Ms. Jackson’s, a place caught in the past. High school graduation pictures of the grandkids, propped up to form a small altar on the console TV. A threadbare runner over the worn carpet in the hall. Hand towels, faded with age, snapped around the handles of drawers. I kept my hands in my pockets and went into the utility room. The scene techs had dusted the door casings and all of the jalousie panes. They’d left smears of black powder on the white enamel of the washer and dryer. But there was something in the air, an odor that wasn’t an old person’s. It wasn’t a detergent or bleach smell. It wasn’t the sweat of men gathered here to do their technical work. There was one small window in the room, sealed and barred and facing the backyard and the alley behind. I stood staring and closed my eyes and took a full, deep breath into my nostrils. It was the smell of the streets, the subway passage deep below Philly’s City Hall, the heating grate after midnight at Eleventh and Moravian, the pile of stained and oily blankets piled around the homeless guy a block from the bus terminal on Thirteenth, and the acrid odor at the brick shack only a couple of miles from here.

  I could feel it in my nose and it was a smell that did not belong here.

  On my way out I passed Richards, who was escorting the two black women from the curb to the back patio where Ms. Thompson still sat. She pointed them in a direction they already knew and turned.

  “You alright?” she said looking into my face.

  “Yeah. I’ll call you when I get something,” I said. “Your guys check the alley?”

  “Of course.”

  “Nothing?

  “Trash. Why? You expect anything?”

  “No. Not with this guy,” I said and walked away.

  Back in my truck I called Billy at his office. I gave him a rundown on the overnight killing and the information on Ms. Thompson.

  “I’ll start as much of a paper chase as I can,” Billy said. “But you’re going to have to get this over to McCane.”

  “Yeah. I’ll page him next,” I said. “I already owe him a call.”

  Billy, as usual, was right. McCane’s resources would be better and faster than even he could get out of public records, though it wasn’t a collaboration I relished. Billy listened to my silence.

  “Are you turning into a believer yet?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “And now we’ve got a survivor.”

  “But she didn’t see a damn thing, Billy,” I said in frustration. “There was a pillow over her face the whole time.”

  “Max. Max,” he said, waiting for my attention. “I didn’t say witness, Max. I said survivor. Survivor is a good thing.”

  16

  I beeped McCane. Punched in my cell number and waited. My truck cab was hot, the glare of the sun snapping off the hood and windshield. Out in front of me the trio of men I’d seen earlier had taken up a position across the street in the shade of a tree. I started the truck and kicked up the A.C. My cell chirped.

  “Freeman. How you doin’, bud? Thought maybe you forgot about me son, and right now, you don’t want to be forgettin’ me.”

  “I can’t imagine you’re the kind of guy who’s easy to forget, McCane.”

  In the background I could hear music. Maybe it was the same song that had been playing before. Maybe McCane hadn’t moved from his seat at the bar.

  “I’ve got another name for you to run through your insurance sources,” I said, expecting a skeptical grumble.

  “Yeah? Well start talkin’, cause all you’re going to be doin’ is listening when you get here, partner. We got us some fat to chew.”

  McCane gave me directions to an address on the east side, and as I rolled down the street the neighborhood posse of three was watching me. All three turned their heads as I passed and I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the head man tipped up his chin.

  I drove to a commercial strip in the city. This time of year the shopping malls and restaurants were doing a brisk business. The closer to the ocean, the brighter the building facades, the more commerce ruled.

  I was looking for a movie marquee on the right and then a turn into a plaza. Kim’s Alley Bar was deep in the corner and I found a space in the lot several doors down and walked back. Inside the stained-glass door I had to stop and let my eyes adjust to the dimness. It was a small place, split in two by a hip-high wall that separated a lounge area from a bar that ran the length of the back wall. There were four men sitting on stools. As my sight sharpened I saw McCane at the far end, a sheaf of papers spread out in front of him, an empty shot glass and a half-drunk shell of beer within reach.

  As I crossed the distance a young, perky bartender called out a greeting, as if she’d just seen me yesterd
ay. As I came closer I saw that she was standing in front of the most handsome hand-carved wood and beveled glass bar back I had ever seen. I was still staring when I got to McCane’s side. The dark wood was intricately scrolled at the ends and across the high façade. Tiers of glass-fronted cabinets were stacked up, and they framed three individual mirrors. It had to be a century old, a stunning piece in this place where everything outside was new and sun-brightened and faux tropical.

  “Suzy. Get Mr. Freeman here a drink, darlin’, so’s he’ll have somethin’ to put in that open mouth of his.”

  McCane pushed back the stool next to him with the toe of his shoe and I asked Suzy for a dark ale in honor of the place.

  “Nice, huh?” McCane said, matching my sight line to the woodwork before us. “They say it was imported from some place in New England somethin’ like fifty years ago in pieces and put back together here. Somehow makes you feel at home even if you ain’t never had anything like it at home.”

  Suzy brought me an ale in a tall, thick glass and I took a sip and had to agree. McCane just pointed at his glass and she topped him off.

  “So what’s with the new name, bud? We got ourselves another dead ol’ lady?”

  “Old man,” I said and his eyebrows raised. “The woman lives six blocks north of the last one. She survived but the way it went down, I think the killer thought he’d finished her.”

  “Dead guy came in and saved her?”

  “No. Looks like he was already there, sleeping with her.”

  McCane just snorted and shook his head.

  “Breaks the pattern,” he said. “But not a bad way to go.”

  I took a longer drink of the ale and in the ornate mirror I saw a wide-shouldered, rangy-looking man with a tanned and weathered face. His hair looked bleached from the sun and his forearms were lined with cabled muscle as he held the tall glass to his face. I did not have a mirror in my shack. The eyes I saw staring back at me over the rim of my glass looked somehow changed to me.

  “So the old lady got a look at this suspect?” McCane said.

  “No. Her face was covered with a pillow he was using to smother her. So we got nothing. Might not even be connected,” I said. “But it feels right.”

  McCane seemed truly disappointed, and took another drink.

  “All right, bud. But we got bigger fish to fry now.”

  He filled me in on his middleman theory. He and Billy might not be able to look each other objectively in the face, but their paper chase had become an effective partnership.

  Billy had run down the legal work on several of the insurance policies. In the ways of lawyers and accountants, there had been a meticulous recording of money expended in obtaining the discounted policies.

  One of the line items was the payment of a finder’s fee. Billy had come up with a Dr. Harold Marshack, psychologist, address in Florida.

  “Guy lives in a condo by the beach,” said McCane. “Gives the same address for his office. Manchester ran him through some Internet link he’s got with the state department of transportation and gave me his plate and car description and I tailed him.”

  McCane finished off his shot. The small glass looked ridiculous pinched between his thick fingers. There was no alcoholic glow in his eyes. Just the enjoyment of letting his tale leak out slowly to me.

  “I followed him to the grocery for milk and donuts. To the Office Depot for paper and stuff. To the bank. Then he takes me on a squirrelly ride to the west side. At first I thought he’d made me. But he was just being careful.”

  McCane took another drink of his beer chaser.

  “He makes one stop at some shabby liquor store on the edge of blacktown over on West Sunrise.”

  No one at the bar acknowledged the slur, if they even heard it. The bartender kept washing glasses. The two guys watching ESPN never flinched. Bonnie Raitt kept singing about shattered love on the jukebox. I’d been wrong about the lack of effect the alcohol was having on McCane as he continued.

  “He goes into the store empty-handed. Comes out with a bottle in a bag, gives a handout to some panhandler and goes straight back home.”

  “You get anything from the store clerk?”

  McCane pointed again at his empty glasses. I waved Suzy off.

  “I came back. Old Tom in the store pretends like I’m not even there. Then when I started asking him about Marshack, he gives me some shit about ‘White cop askin’ bout some white guy in here? That’s a new one.’ And then he goes on about how Marshack comes in maybe once every couple months. He buys a bottle of Hennessy Cognac. Doesn’t use the phone or meet anyone. Just buys his booze and leaves. Only weird thing I could get out of the old coot was that the good doctor always pays with a hundred-dollar bill. No doubt an oddity in that place.”

  McCane waited a moment to let the information settle and then asked, “That ring any bells for you?” He was looking intently into my face for an answer.

  I was trying to grind out the scene in my head, working the possibilities. There was a new rock in there but with only the slightest edge to it, and I couldn’t get a hold of it.

  “You on him again last night?” I finally said.

  “I found a nice comfortable spot across the road from his place. Watched the Caprice for hours. Never moved.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “I woke up at 5:00 A.M. You know how surveillance goes. But the Caprice was still there. I even moseyed on over and felt the hood. Stone cold.”

  McCane was a bigot. Might be an alcoholic. But he hadn’t lost all of his cop instincts.

  “He ain’t your doer, Freeman,” he said. “Not the kind who creeps into houses and smothers old ladies. I seen him up close. He ain’t got the hands for it. But if you get your detective friend to get a warrant and toss his place we might find something.”

  I stopped and let McCane’s words settle in my head for a few seconds.

  “Which detective is that?” I asked, knowing Billy would not have brought Richards’s name into a conversation with McCane.

  “Guy like you gotta have a local on the pad, Freeman. No P.I. I know gets along without one.”

  He held my eyes with his and didn’t allow them to slide away. I didn’t respond.

  “You track the Thompson policy if there is one. We’ll wait and see what we come up with,” I said, pushing back the stool and taking one last appreciative look at the bar back.

  “Follow the money, bud,” McCane said, tossing back another shot. “Just follow the money.”

  17

  Eddie went home when he got confused. And now he was home. He’d come in at night, through the back using his old key, and sat down in the middle of the living room floor and listened.

  It wasn’t the old man suddenly coming out of the bathroom that confused him. It was bothersome. Bothersome that someone else was with Ms. Thompson and he hadn’t known. But the old man’s neck was weak and Eddie could feel the rickety bones inside and it really hadn’t taken much effort. Afterwards he’d been careful to lay the old fella out and slipped out quiet. He’d even remembered the chain before he put each glass pane back in its place.

  No. That part had gone all right. But then he’d waited, just like he always had before, at the post box on Seventh Avenue and Mr. Harold never came by and now he was confused.

  Mr. Harold always brought the rest of the money after it was done, an envelope with cash and a date written on one of the bills so Eddie would know when to meet him again at the liquor store. But Eddie waited at the mail drop box at the far end of the parking lot and Mr. Harold never showed. The old Caprice never pulled up and he never dropped the envelope in Eddie’s hand instead of in the box. Eddie waited until the security guard finally came out and told him to get the hell off the property, it was federal land and what the hell was he doin’ there anyway. And Eddie answered, “I do not know.”

  That’s what had confused him. What had he done to make Mr. Harold not come? What had he done wrong? Ms. Thompson was gone
like she was supposed to be. The old man was just extra. Eddie had tried to figure it out by going down to the Brown Man’s and buying another bundle. He’d gone over to Riverside Park and done the heroin until dark. But he ended up here, back at his mother’s house.

  He sat listening for her now, facing the kitchen. He had stuffed the towels from the bathroom under her door. He’d used the gray duct tape (“best damn thing ever made for fixin’ ”) and sealed all the cracks. He’d done the same on her closet and inside all the windows in her room. He’d done a good job and he didn’t want to see it again. So he sat with his back to her door and listened. Momma had never stopped tellin’ him what to do. Now the least she could do was help him figure out what to do next.

  I drove back north on I-95, heading to Billy’s apartment, where he said he’d been working on another case but couldn’t keep his head out of the insurance and murders he was convinced were connected. On the main interstate through South Florida you are best off being a lemming. You fit yourself into one of the middle lanes and then stay in time with those in front of you. If they do seventy, that’s what you do. If they crawl at thirty-five, you join them. There will always be someone faster, more impatient, more aggressive than you. Let them, I reminded myself.

  At Billy’s I waved at Murray and he raised one eyebrow in return. Upstairs Billy hit the electronic lock and when I came in he was at the kitchen counter, starting coffee.

  “I also h-have beer if it’s not too early. Help yourself. I still have s-some work,” he said, going back into his study. In his working room Billy had two computer systems, one almost always connected to local, state and federal government sites. The walls of the room were lined with law and reference books. He is a workaholic, a trait I did not envy.

  I got a beer. It wasn’t too early. I unscrewed the cap and walked out to the balcony through the already opened glass door. Billy’s abuse of A.C., I believe, was a spiteful reaction to his years growing up on the broiling summer streets of North Philly. In the summer only Mustafa’s Groceries had air conditioning through one rattling wall unit. You could go over to Blizzards Billiards on Fifth Street and take a chance at getting your ass kicked by whatever gang controlled that corner. But Billy had stayed home instead with a fan set up in his second-story staircase window and read.