by Mike Stewart
I looked at the floor.
“Okay, okay. Here it is. The illness rates among jurors assigned to cases being tried by Russell and Wagler cannot be the result of naturally occurring factors.”
“You can really tell that from a formula or two?”
“Yes. I really can.”
A day’s worth of tension flooded out of my neck and shoulders. I said, “I think you just saved my career.”
“Does that mean you’ll feed me? I’m starving.”
Eighteen
December is a gray, wet month in the deep South. My memories of Christmas mornings are of speeding downhill on steel skates or a new bike from Sears with freezing raindrops cutting at my face like razor blades, which was more fun than it sounds.
Now, as I lay in bed ruminating on my ruined career, a tingle of nostalgia or maybe just remembered cold trickled down my spine as a steady drizzle patted the roof like watery fingertips. Down the hall, Kai-Li slept in a New Orleans Jazz Festival T-shirt I’d found for her. She’d put it on in the privacy of my guest room. I imagined how she looked swallowed up inside my old shirt, sleeping on her side, the covers pulled back just enough …
This was not getting me anywhere.
Weak light framed closed drapes. I clicked on the bedside lamp and got onto my feet. I found running shorts and a Birmingham City Stages T-shirt in my top drawer and pulled them on. My hooded sweatshirt and shoes were in the downstairs closet. I pushed bare feet into cold running shoes—I could never understand how anyone jogs in socks—and let myself out the back door.
It was time.
Feeling like I’d been beaten with sticks in my sleep, I leaned over and hugged my knees to stretch my back and hamstrings. I pulled each foot back against my butt, and then, falling forward against the house in a sort of vertical pushup, I touched both heels to the ground, one after the other, and turned toward the beach.
Sand sprayed against the backs of my legs with each kick. An orange glow framed houses and trees to the east and tipped the swells in Mobile Bay. My neighbor’s floating Christmas tree bobbed on the water, its bulbs growing dim in the early-morning light.
And someone was following me.
Around the one-mile mark, I’d caught the barest glimpse of a figure running about two hundred yards back. I sped up. So did he or she. I never turned around and took a good look. I used the corner of my eye as I looked out over the Bay in one direction and watched the sun rise in the other.
I realized I wasn’t the only person who runs on the beach before work. Being able to do that very thing is why many people live there. I also realized that Kai-Li could be back there, taking a morning run, watching me but keeping a distance, allowing me my privacy. But I didn’t think so. The same primitive alarm I’d felt in Auburn before my film was stolen was blaring inside my skull.
My shadow had been drifting closer as I ran faster.
Now I slowed to bring him or her inside a hundred yards. Around a small curve in the beach, I planted my forward foot, spun, and tried my best to make a ten-second hundred out of it.
It was a man. He froze for two beats, which was what I was counting on. It’s an old saying among cops—action is twice as fast as reaction. And, in the time it took his brain to process the change, I was twenty yards closer. I could see the Cajun.
He spun and started pumping, but I was going full speed and he was just out of the blocks. I closed to thirty yards, then the quick little bastard started pulling away fast. I’m middling fast. This guy could fly. There was no way to outrun him. I had to think fast, and what I came up with was more meat cleaver than scalpel.
I cupped my hands on either side of my mouth. “You better run, you fucking coonass coward.”
He looked back.
I slowed to a walk. “I bet your two-dollar swamp whore of a mother was fast too.”
He stopped.
I kept walking and talking. “Come on, asshole. You’re good at sneaking around in the dark. You any good at acting like a man?” I was within fifteen yards now. The Cajun’s nostrils flared with each breath. “I called your mother a two-dollar whore. That okay with you? Or maybe it’s true. Is that it?” I stopped five feet from the Cajun. “Why don’t you run away and put a dead bunny rabbit on my car? That’ll show me.”
He locked eyes with me, and a tiny shudder rippled across the skin on my back.
Long black hair swept back from a bony forehead. His sunken cheeks were marked with old scars, and the skin on his neck seemed to strain with the effort of containing thick, twisted cables of muscle and sinew.
I’d wanted him to stop. Be careful what you wish for.
Seconds passed as we stared at each other. Finally, he said, “You want me? Heah I stan’.”
I caught a swift movement at his side and glanced down. He held a lockblade knife in his left hand, and I noticed a dagger tattoo on the thick pad of muscle between his thumb and index finger. I’m no rube. I’ve seen Oz, and I recognized the sign of a prison-yard assassin.
I nodded at the knife. “That your specialty in prison? Knifing unarmed men?”
He shrugged.
“But you’re not supposed to kill me, are you?”
Surprise flickered across his features before he caught himself. He said, “Accidents dey do happen.”
“I want to know who hired you.”
He shrugged his shoulders again and held up the knife. “Steers want balls.”
I decided that was just about enough talk. “Lose the knife.”
“Fug you.”
“Fuck me? Fuck you. You break into my house, poison me in my own car. You wanna act tough? Drop the knife. We’ll find out.”
He waved me off with feigned disgust and turned to walk away. The Cajun expected me to jump him when he turned his back. And I knew he expected it. But it was still the best shot I was going to get.
I was almost on him when he spun right, leading with his elbow. Stepping inside the arc, I ducked his elbow and grabbed a handful of Cajun testicles in my left hand and squeezed hard. The blade in his left fist slashed for my chest as he came full around. I threw up my right forearm to block his knife hand and felt the burn of his blade across the bridge of my nose. Still gripping his balls, I shifted weight to my right foot, dropped my elbow, and drove the best uppercut I had into his left armpit. A glint of morning sunlight caught my eye as the steel blade spun into the sand.
A solid right cross exploded into my temple. The beach faded to gray and came back. I clubbed wildly with my right fist, while clamping down and twisting his ball sack with my left. The Cajun squealed like a hog and pounded with both fists and kicked to get away from my hold on his nuts. Time got slow, like the dreamlike motion in an auto accident, and I could feel his breath on my face, burning the open cut across my nose. I tried to butt his pock-marked face and missed as he leaped into the air in some kind of Bruce Lee spinning thing. Out of nowhere, something, maybe a knee, slammed into my chest. I went down like I’d been shot—rolling, expecting him to come after me. But he went instead for the knife, his back turned slightly to reach for it.
Something like hot tar spread through my chest as I staggered to my feet. The Cajun didn’t turn. He thought I was down, and he was counting on the knife to end it. Two quick steps, and I kicked him hard in the ribs. Nothing fancy. Just like punting a football, except I ended up on my back in the sand.
A sound like whooah gushed out of the Cajun in a wash of hot air, and my kick spun him away from the knife. Before he’d landed, I was scrambling across the sand on my stomach like a sick animal. My fingers found the blade. I rolled up onto one knee and saw the man who had been making my life a living hell stumble away.
First he staggered. Then he ran. He was bent over; he held his side; he limped badly and painfully each time his left foot struck earth. But he was running, which was a damn sight more than I could have done right then.
It was a stupid plan. It hadn’t worked.
I pushed up onto my feet to try
and follow. But, as the Cajun limped away from the water, he stopped short and tried to turn in his tracks. I could see his hard black eyes focus on mine just before a white-haired giant stepped into sight and smashed him across the base of his skull with the butt of a shotgun.
The Cajun spun into the sand face first and went limp. Joey reached down, flipped him over, and removed his belt. After using the belt to tie the Cajun’s hands behind his back, Joey walked over to check on me. He was dragging the Cajun by one limp foot, like a toddler dragging a rag doll across the playground.
I could feel liquid heat flowing from the gash across my nose, coating my lips and chin with blood. I said, “Good timing.”
“You did okay.”
“If this is okay,” I said, “I’d hate to get my ass kicked.” I reached out and handed Joey the knife. It was taking too much strength to hold it. “What took you so long?”
Joey laughed. “It probably seemed like a hell of a long time to you, Tom. But that whole nut-snatchin’ fight you just had probably lasted six or seven seconds.”
My friend glanced down at the unconscious stranger. “Good thing he wasn’t supposed to kill you. You’d’ve never seen him comin’.”
“Yeah.” I spit a mouthful of blood into the sand. “I feel lucky as hell.”
Kai-Li’s ashen face was close to mine. Her bright eyes jumped over the Cajun’s handiwork. She guided a cotton swab over cuts and bruises. She’d dipped the cotton in something cool. Whatever it was stung and felt good.
She straightened to examine her work. “What’s your friend going to do with the man who did this? Nothing stupid, I’m hoping.”
I shook my head. “I’m sure Joey will wait till the guy wakes up and try to get some information, if he can. But then he’ll call the cops.”
“Shouldn’t you have waited for the police? You were the one attacked.”
“I couldn’t wait. I was too traumatized by the vicious brutality of an unknown attacker.”
Kai-Li gave me a look and turned to the first-aid kit she’d laid out on the kitchen table. She began tearing thin strips of adhesive tape and snipping them into one-inch lengths.
Her hair was clipped into a loopy thing on the back of her neck. I spoke to her back. “We don’t expect him to tell us anything. We set this up to get the Cajun arrested, not to torture information out of him. Mostly we just want the guy ID’d.”
She turned back and grimaced. “I’m going to have to pull that cut together.”
I watched her fingers work.
“Twist the strips in the middle.”
She nodded.
Kai-Li gently pressed one end of a bandage beneath the gash across the bridge of my nose. She put the index finger of her other hand above the cut and pushed. Firecrackers exploded inside my eyeballs, and a less-than-masculine yelp sounded deep in my throat.
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I knew the pain was coming sooner or later. It didn’t really hurt when it happened.”
“Adrenaline?”
“Sharp knife.”
She stretched two more twisted strips of tape across the cut. “You said you set it up.”
“What?”
“You said you set up your fight with the, uh, the Cajun man. Why would you do that? I mean, if you knew where he was …”
“We didn’t know. Joey’s tried tailing the guy twice. Both times the Cajun lost him. So, I was sitting around here after you called from Montgomery yesterday, and something occurred to me. I called Joey—he was in Montgomery too, checking out Judge Savin—and asked him to come down here and tail me.”
Kai-Li smiled. “Instead of trying to track the lion. You decided to stake a lamb in the jungle.”
“Baaa.”
She smiled. “Did you ever stop to wonder why you chose a trap that would put you in physical danger?”
I shrugged. “It was all I could think of.”
“You couldn’t have taken a gun? You couldn’t have led him to the police? Think about it.”
I looked into her eyes. “You’re not going to start telling me about how I’m three people again, are you?”
Kai-Li raised her eyebrows and sighed. “Anyway, I’ve done the best I can on these cuts, but you’re going to need stitches on your nose. Who’s your doctor? I should call ahead.”
I thought about that. “Call Dr. Laurel Adderson. Her number should be on a pad by the living-room phone. Ask her to meet us at the emergency room in Daphne.”
Kai-Li spun and hurried toward the door. Then she stopped short and turned back. “Isn’t that the juror’s doctor who won’t take your phone calls?”
“That’s her.”
“Why would you think …?”
“She hears I’ve been attacked, I think curiosity will get the better of her.”
Kai-Li raised an eyebrow. “And your natural charm will overwhelm her once you’re face-to-face? Is that it?”
“I don’t need charm.” I tried to smile. “Look at me. I’m pitiful.”
Nineteen
I locked the door and turned to trot down the front steps and almost ran into Kai-Li. She was frozen at the edge of the porch.
“What’s that?”
I looked. Joey had reclaimed his giant Expedition and left my Hatari! loaner in its place. “I think it’s called a Land Rover Safari something-or-other.”
Kai-Li looked at me, but I couldn’t read her. All she said was, “Good name for it.”
Small-town emergency rooms don’t look like much. I shared space in a tired yellow cube with two other patients—one, a bald plumber with soiled overalls and a broken finger, and the other, a pretty, young housewife who complained of migraine and occasionally vomited into a trash can.
The volcanic housewife went back first. I went ahead of the plumber.
Triage.
Kai-Li went back with me. I wanted her to meet Dr. Adderson and explain that I wasn’t crazy. A nurse in baby-blue scrubs told me to remove my clothes and put on a cheap apron that she called a robe. I sat on the examining table in my running clothes and waited.
Kai-Li asked, “Aren’t you going to put on the robe?”
I shook my head. “They always say that.”
“Do you want me to step outside?”
“Nope.”
“Do you need me to help you?”
“Thanks. But I don’t think getting naked’s going to help her sew my nose up.”
Kai-Li stepped in front of me and unzipped my sweatshirt. “Do you know the difference between men and boys, Tom?” She paused. “There isn’t one.”
She pulled the sleeves off by the cuffs and gently lifted the sweatshirt away and draped it over the back of a cheap plastic chair in one corner of the examination room. Next she slipped her fingers under my shirttail.
“Lift your arms.”
When my hands reached shoulder height, I felt a hot coal fire up inside my chest, and I made a noise appropriate to the sensation.
Kai-Li shook her head again. All she said was, “See?”
“I don’t think my arms are going much higher than that.”
She worked the T-shirt up and over my head and arms and tossed it across the sweatshirt. When she turned back, Kai-Li made a little gasping sound and pointed a finger at my chest.
“My God, Tom. What’d he do to you?”
I looked down at a black, purple, and green bruise about the size of a softball. It was not unimpressive.
“I think he kneed me in the chest.”
“And you didn’t want to take your shirt off.” She had her hands on her hips. I had the feeling I was getting a look usually reserved for her daughter. “I’ll step outside if you need to remove the shorts. I mean, be a grown-up about this. You aren’t hiding something under there too, are you?”
I could have said something sophomoric, but that’s when Dr. Adderson walked into the room. She didn’t look happy to see me.
“I am not your doctor, Tom.”
“Y
ou treated me after the wreck. You were close by, and I needed help.”
Dr. Adderson held a manila folder in one hand. It had a row of colored squares along the edge with numbers on them. My name and social security number were typed across a label stuck on the top corner. She stepped in front of me and tossed the folder on the examining table.
Placing the tips of her fingers on my cheeks and tilting my face toward the light, Laurel Adderson nodded toward Kai-Li and asked, “Did you do the butterfly bandages?”
“Yes.”
“Good job. I need a plastic surgeon to look at this.” She stepped outside the room and spoke with a nurse. When she came back, she said, “We’re seeing who’s here.”
Seconds later, the baby-blue nurse came in with a stainless steel bowl full of chipped ice. As the nurse began filling a clear plastic bag from the bowl, Adderson asked, “How long ago did this happen?”
I said, “A couple of hours.”
“How’d you do this, Tom?”
I told her I had been attacked on the beach by a man who had been shadowing me since I started work on the Baneberry case.
She asked if I’d be willing to consult with a staff psychiatrist.
I said, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll talk to your shrink if you’ll sit down with Dr. Kai-Li Cantil here …”
Kai-Li said, “I’m not a medical doctor. Professor of psychology.”
Laurel Adderson nodded.
I went on. “If you’ll sit down with Dr. Cantil for ten minutes and hear her out, I’ll talk to anybody you want me to.”
Dr. Adderson’s eyebrows arched. “I’m not in the habit …”
“I’m not talking about habits. I’m talking about ten minutes of your time to get me to do something that you, as a physician, believe is necessary to my health. Are you too proud to swap ten minutes for a patient’s health?”
“Don’t try to manipulate me, Tom.”
“I’m trying to help you. You don’t believe it yet. But I’m trying to help both of us.”
Sunshine had melted December drab into bright, cloudless skies. Sitting in my living room, chewing a mouthful of pepperoni-and-banana-pepper pizza, it looked almost like early spring through the windows.