by J. A. Kerley
That made the year 1943.
“Harriet, Mama, Harriet…” Odelia called. Harriet turned to the sound and there was Odelia floating right in front of her. Was Odelia flying? How did she do that?
“Mama?”
“You have to wait your turn, Deel,” Harriet lectured Odelia. “I just got in the swing. It’s my turn.”
Odelia frowned and flew away, over the tree and into the woods at the edge of the yard. “My turn,” Harriet giggled.
But as fast as she’d gone, Odelia was back, her face as near as if she were in the swing with Harriet.
“Mama,” the voice said again. No, not Odelia. Who was that voice? “Mama, it’s me…”
Odelia melted away, replaced by another face. It was so familiar, it was—
“Mama, it’s me, Patricia. Your daughter, remember?”
The tire swing dissolved, making a musical note like a chime as it vanished. Harriet felt her feet touch the ground and she was off balance, falling backward into white. A pillow surrounded her head, crisp and cool. The air suddenly smelled less of grass and more of liniment. Harriet studied the face before her. Round, with ringlets of bright blonde hair. She held up her hand and felt another hand clasp her fingers, hold them gently. It felt good.
“Patricia?” Harriet whispered. “Is that you, girl?”
“Yes, Mama, it’s me. I’m right here by your bed.”
Harriet felt a wave of sorrow pass through her body. It was as if she’d become surrounded by pictures from a long time ago. She had to push at them to make them retreat, but they never seemed to go far. Sometimes it seemed they were painted inside her eyelids, there every time she closed her eyes.
“Hi, baby,” she said, squeezing back at the hand around hers, feeling its strength and affection. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what, Mama?”
“I got confused again. I thought you were Odelia.”
“You weren’t confused, Mama. You were just dreaming. You always know who I am.”
“Just dreaming?” Harriet said, taking in the small room, her bed, the television on a table by the wall. The photos push-pinned into a cork board.
“Everybody dreams, Mama. You were dreaming of Odelia.”
Harriet saw a dark hearse and smelled fresh dirt.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes, Mama. Aunt Deelie passed a dozen years back.”
A tall black woman in white went by the door, stopped, looked inside. Harriet forced thoughts to the front of her head. The woman’s name was Selma. She was a nurse. She was nice.
“Howdy, Miss Harriet,” the nurse named Selma said. “How you doin’ this lovely morning?”
“I’m good, Selma. I was dreaming again.”
Harriet saw Selma pass a look to Patricia, then a broad smile. “You’re a lucky woman, Miss Harriet, to have a daughter like Patricia here to care for you almost every day.”
“She’s my baby,” Harriet said, new thoughts flooding her head. “I took care of her, now she takes care of me.”
“We take care of each other, Mama,” Patricia said, leaning in to kiss Harriet’s brow.
“Are you crying, Odelia?” Harriet asked. “Are those tears in your eyes?”
31
It was past six when I dropped Harry at his car and headed home, too worn out to think any more. It was a quiet drive to the Island, me trying to figure who might be insane enough to murder people to get back at me. Since we moved as a team, Harry was probably making his own list, though I tended to make more enemies, by and large.
The worst problems arose from two primary quarters, Honor and Madness. The first, honor, was big with gang types. Having nothing normal people would claim as worthy, they develop honor codes as a gauge for self-worth, always using hyper-inflated currency. People who’ve never done anything remotely respectable bristle at the slightest signs of disrespect from others.
Dissing someone, in gang parlance, could get you killed, probably by a twenty-year-old dropout who sells drugs, fathers children he doesn’t acknowledge, beats his girlfriends, steals anything within reach, all the while ignoring and evading every attempt to bend him toward becoming a productive member of the human coalition.
Yet somehow his sensitivities are so finely tuned that if you look sideways at him, he’ll shoot you dead in the street to assert his honor.
The other side is more nebulous: madness. I figure of every thousand human beings, sixty are broken beyond repair from a psychological standpoint. Twenty go to prison by their mid-twenties and stay in or near the penal system. Ten become their own victims, homeless, drug or alcohol-ravaged, institutionalized for hallucinations, or they sit in a corner of a relative’s home and melt into components.
This leaves a pool of thirty souls. They hold jobs, appear to be decent neighbors, speak normally on the street. But closed doors find them hunched over the vilest of pornography, or imagining ugly things to do to people of different gender, racial make-up, or contrary political views. Most stay wrapped up, their inner torments rarely breaching the containment vessel. Some are undoubtedly sociopathic, but aren’t physically violent, instead manipulating those closest to them, stealing company funds, running Ponzi schemes, and so forth.
Five of these people eventually act out in a violent and generally unforeseen emotional explosion, often injuring others in the process. They reach some kind of limit and combust.
Two simply disappear. No one will know where they went, ever.
The final one is the person who not only manages his or her sickness, but draws strength from the disease, becoming more and more twisted, yet simultaneously stealthy in its concealment. These distillations of human misery are invariably megalomaniacal, their sense of self-worth inflated past all limit. They view social and cultural structures as barriers to their development, but become exceptionally adept at fitting in, emotional chameleons who can jiujitsu others with a word or gesture.
Oddly enough, they hold something in common with the Honor types: insecure at their deepest, unacknowledged core, they can be sensitive to every slight. Insult or humiliate one of these people and you could create an enemy whose sole goal in life is your destruction. And you might never even know it until it was too late.
I aimed the headlights toward Dauphin Island, looking forward to retrieving Mix-up from my animal-activist neighbor, though she would gladly keep him a week if asked; he was her favorite pooch in a house holding six dogs, three cats, and one strutting, Napoleonic parrot. But I was feeling neglectful and guilty about my late hours.
Still, my recent overnight respite with Clair played warmly through my head. I had to go home, but I didn’t have to go home alone. I picked up my cell, dialed her directly.
“Hi, Clair. You home or at the shop?”
“Here I am surrounded by dead bodies. A girl’s lifelong dream, right?”
“I was thinking … how about I pick you up and we’ll head to the Island? We can grab ’cue or sandwiches on the way, sit on the deck and watch the water.” I lowered my voice. “Maybe take a moonlight swim.”
“Swim? But I don’t have a suit at your place, do I?”
“You’ve not needed one in the past,” I crooned. “At night, at least.”
“And moonlight doesn’t weigh as hard on an ageing body, does it?”
“Pardon me?”
“How’s young Miss Holliday? Will she be there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Two of the last four times I’ve seen you have been with her.”
“She’s a student, Clair. I’m trying to broaden her experience.”
“Broaden her experience? Is that what it’s called now? I’m so out of touch with youthful slang.”
Since the beginning the conversation had seemed off-kilter, like walking a path tipped three degrees sideways. But I suddenly saw things straight.
“Jesus, Clair, you think I’m, I’m, I’m…” I couldn’t find the right words.
“I’ve never he
ard you stutter before, Carson. You’re what?”
“Sleeping with her,” I finished.
“Sleeping with who, Carson?”
“Holliday.”
“You’re sleeping with Holliday?” Clair asked.
“NO! I didn’t say I was, I said I wasn’t.”
“I know you’re not,” Clair assured me. “She doesn’t have that look yet. How many times has Little Miss Christmas been to your home, Carson?”
“Once, Clair. She was biking in the neighborhood and briefly stopped in. A couple hours is all.”
“Two hours is brief? I think of two minutes as brief, two hours as—”
“It was perfectly innocent, Clair. She stopped by, showered, changed, then I made sandwiches and we—”
“My ears must be in terrible shape. I thought you said she showered.”
“Downstairs. She’d been biking, remember?”
“Vaguely. It’s my dimming geriatric mind.”
“Clair, the girl is eleven years younger than I am.”
“Lawd, eleven years. How much younger are you than I am, Carson?”
I mumbled something.
“I probably should look into hearing aids,” Clair said. “What did you say?”
“About eleven years. But that’s different. We’re, uh…”
“Older? Wiser?” she interrupted. “I am. Older, that is.”
“We’re friends, Clair. Wonderful friends.”
“Friends?”
“Exactly. Great friends.”
A two-beat pause. “Who is this calling again? I can’t remember a thing these days.”
She hung up.
Gregory had put in an hour-long workout, showered, changed into gray cords, cream dress shirt, a maroon linen jacket. The sky was dark outside his office window, the moon hiding under clouds. Streetlamps lined the avenue, the trees nearest the lamps glowing white, the shadows long and stark. Gregory saw a white cat vault from a parked car’s roof to its hood, then to the ground, disappearing into black. I have to check the trap tonight, he thought. It’s been two days.
They had been a very busy two days, the most exciting days of his life, electric days, as if lightning was powering Gregory’s mind, the thunder reverberating through his body with orgasmic intensity. He was exercising ultimate power. What was it Oppenheimer had said after the first successful atom-bomb test? I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.
What is Ryder’s world like now?
Gregory sat and navigated to YouTube. No new videos had been loaded. A pity. Knowing what he now knew, would Ryder still pitch the pennies?
Gregory’s eyes scanned the room and fell on the brown manila envelope on the cabinet top, his upcoming contact with Ryder. Beside the envelope folded black fabric rested atop a pair of dark Converse sneakers. An Event Suit, ready to go.
The body stocking kept his hair and skin cells on his body. He’d shaved his head as well, but wore goggles so he didn’t have to shave his eyebrows. He could easily explain a shaved head to Ema, eyebrows another story. He’d bought cheap tennis shoes far too tight for his feet and opened the fronts to fit; if he left footprints they’d be three sizes too small.
When he’d left the tragic little fairy dying on the floor he’d simply stepped into the coveralls that had been folded inside his messenger bag and traded his event shoes for boots. In the old truck he was one more anonymous painter or carpenter on his way to a jobsite.
A smart man prepared for every eventuality. The cops weren’t smart, but they were dogged, and a single misstep could be costly. Only after learning that from Ema had he conceived and developed his Event Suit. Use it, burn it, wear another. He’d bought a dozen body stockings and sneakers. And could always buy more.
But now to check his traps. He could use a little furry company before the cats moved to the next stage of their existence.
32
When I returned to the department at eight a.m. the files were still on my desk, though I could now re-file the Scaggs material. Both Harry and I had felt it: Scaggs wasn’t the perp.
There was something new on my desk: a letter-sized manila envelope. Across the front was a taped square of paper, printing on its face.
OFFICIAL POLICE MATERIALS
If found please return to Detective Carson Ryder,
Police Department, Mobile Alabama
“What the hell’s this?” I said aloud.
Al Perkins, the detective at the next cubicle, stood and looked over the divider. “You don’t know?”
“Never saw it before.”
“Some woman brought it in a few minutes ago, said she found it on the sidewalk a hundred feet from the parking garage. I figured it must have fallen out of your briefcase or something. Seemed odd. Didn’t you just get here?”
I undid the metal clip and opened the envelope, shook it over my desk. Three bright pennies dropped out. Followed by a strip of paper much like those found in fortune cookies, bearing one brief line:
Selected by a chance in time, pennies pay for all your crimes
“Where’s the woman?” I said, my heart in my throat as I jumped to my feet, chair rocketing into the wall.
Perkins shrugged.
“WHAT DID SHE LOOK LIKE?” I yelled.
Perkins gawped at me like I’d blown a circuit. “For chrissakes, Carson, she didn’t walk up here. She left it at the desk.”
I took the steps three at a time, bolted across the lobby seconds later. Big Jim Lott, the desk man, pointed out the door. “Sixty maybe. Polite black lady, grandmotherly type. Gray hair, stout build. Blue dress. Big purse. She walked out of here two minutes ago.”
I hit the street at a run, looking both ways, nothing. I sprinted to the end of the block. There! Getting into a silver compact. “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said, puffing in behind her. “You just left an envelope at the station?”
She studied me: jeans, black T-shirt, blue running shoes. I produced my ID, held it up. “I’m a police officer.”
“I was walking down the street, there it was in the middle of the sidewalk. I took it to the police station straightaway.”
“Where was the envelope lying, ma’am? Can you show me?”
She backtracked two dozen feet, stopped. Pointed to the pavement. “Right about there, I guess.”
Nothing but sidewalk. No pennies. No notes. Sparse traffic blew past.
“You didn’t see anyone leave the envelope?” I asked.
“I turned the corner and there it was.” She thought a moment and got wide-eyed. “It didn’t have a bomb or nothing like that inside, did it?”
“No ma’am, nothing like that.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, looked at me over tortoiseshell glasses. “You’re the one who dropped it?”
“Yes, ma’am. It was a mistake. Thank you for bringing it to the department.”
I nodded and moved away. “Sir?” the woman called to my back. “Officer?”
I turned. “Yes, ma’am?”
“You should be more careful with things in the future, sir. It said ‘Official’.”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I promise to do better.”
Harriet Ralway was sitting in the sun on the long side lawn. There were planes in the sky, the soldiers returning from the war. Daddy wasn’t coming. Harry James was playing a trumpet somewhere nearby. A little girl ran to the edge of the Gulf waves and picked up a shell. When she returned she was an old woman.
“Odelia?” Harriet said. But when she reached out Odelia was gone. The planes flew by and the air was quiet. Harriet closed her eyes and listened to Harry James. He was playing “Muskrat Ramble”, a fun tune.
A little boy ran past, that boy from next door, Jerry Ralway, a scamp. She would fall in love with him in high school. They’d get married young and have a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage. She would not get pregnant again for many years, a daughter named Patricia. The marriage would last twenty-four years until Jerry died in a car crash outside of Dawson, drunk on Southern Comf
ort and Coke, drag-racing that old Dodge Charger even though it was 1988 and he was forty-six years old. Racing, hunting, fishing all the time … he never really grew up, that Jerry Ralway.
Harriet sighed, heard a crackly sound and opened her eyes, dreaming again. She was in her usual place when she’d go outside, the bench at the far corner of the lawn, the brick building at her back. Many of the residents couldn’t come here because it was distant and old legs couldn’t walk so far. Plus you had to cross grass and walkers and wheelchairs didn’t work well.
The sound again: feet over dried leaves. Harry James played softly in the distance, the notes punctuated by crunching leaves.
Harriet opened her eyes and turned to the woods bordering the property, a tall fence separating them. A shadow stared back at her, a black shadow in the shape of a man. The shadow was leaning against a tree.
The Shadow’s name was Lamont Cranston and he fought crime on radio when Harriet was a little girl. The Shadow knew the evil that lurked in the hearts of men. Harriet was thrilled to be visited by a man who’d kept her company on many a youthful afternoon.
No, wait … there was a diving mask over the man’s eyes. It wasn’t the Shadow. It must be Lloyd Bridges, that actor she used to love to watch on TV in the sixties, Sea Hunt. Such a handsome man, unruly hair and sparkly-crinkle eyes.
Harry James began playing the Sea Hunt theme, so thoughtful. Mr Bridges was getting ready to take a dive. He had one of those things in his hand, metal and rubber. Jerry had one of those things too, used it to bring home supper sometimes, red snapper or mackerel. Spear-fishing, Jerry called it.
“Hi, Lloyd,” Harriet whispered, waving hello with her fingertips.
Lloyd Bridges smiled and waved back.
Ten minutes later we were in the meeting room adjoining Lieutenant Mason’s office. The far wall held a TV monitor and video player. A whiteboard stood in the corner. One wall was all windows and I saw gulls darting through a cumulus sky.
“It was sitting on the sidewalk?” Tom Mason said, spinning the envelope his way with the eraser of a pencil.
“I called Forensics. They’re looking for trace on the pavement.”
“Anyone witness anything?”