The Dirty South - Charlie Parker Series 18 (2020)

by Connolly, John

  Even though Holt had moved some distance away, and believed himself to be unobserved, Knight could see him discreetly checking his phone, moving it here and there in an effort to pick up a signal. When he failed, he began painstakingly typing out a text message, presumably in the hope that it might be sent as soon as the bars on the phone appeared again. If the recipient were anyone other than Jurel Cade, Knight would have been shocked to learn it. In his view, Holt’s fear of the chief deputy almost certainly outweighed any obligation the former might have felt toward Evan Griffin, the Cargill PD, and the requirements of law and justice. He wondered how long it would take Holt to find an excuse to leave the scene. Not long, as it turned out.

  ‘I’m going to head home for a few minutes,’ Holt told Knight. ‘I didn’t dress warm enough, and there’s a dampness in the air.’

  ‘I keep an old coat in the trunk of my car,’ said Knight. ‘Never know when a man might require another layer.’

  ‘All due respect, Kel, you got six inches on me, and I got at least twelve on you around the waist. I don’t believe one of your coats is going to do me much good. I’ll pick up coffee and doughnuts from Ferdy’s on the way back, and some bagels too.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ said Knight.

  ‘I am.’

  Knight watched Holt get into his crappy Phoenix and start the engine. Just as he was about to pull away, Knight made a roll-down-the-window gesture.

  ‘What is it?’ said Holt.

  ‘You’re running on a flat, Loyd.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Left rear. Doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere until you get it changed.’

  Holt leaned out the window and glared at the deflated tire.

  ‘Aw, goddamn.’

  ‘Won’t take long to fix. I’ll give you a hand. You got a spare?’

  ‘In the trunk.’

  ‘You want to pop it open?’

  Holt did, and a jab with Knight’s pocketknife took care of the spare tire just as assuredly as it had the left rear.

  ‘Right,’ said Knight, ‘let’s get started.’

  McKenzie watched Kel Knight lift out the spare tire as Loyd Holt struggled with the jack. He’d noticed Knight kneeling by Holt’s car earlier. Now he understood why.

  ‘Seems like Loyd has a problem with a tire,’ said McKenzie.

  ‘That’s unfortunate, but Loyd doesn’t know from problems,’ said Griffin. ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘I could see a deep puncture at the base of the girl’s skull when I knelt beside her. Didn’t need to lift her head to spot it, but I thought you’d prefer to be made aware of it before Loyd was.’

  A deep injury to the base of the skull, a killing wound. Griffin returned in his mind to the photographs in Parker’s file, and one in particular: a girl lying naked in a pool of water, the red hole of a penetrating skull fracture clearly visible, dried blood around her ears and eyes.

  Patricia Hartley.

  Evan Griffin had not been permitted to view Patricia Hartley’s remains, thanks to issues of jurisdiction and the efforts of Jurel Cade. The little he knew about the circumstances of its discovery came from Tucker McKenzie, who had heard on the grapevine about the body while he was over in Hot Springs working on another case, and had swung by the scene on the assumption that he would eventually be needed one way or another. When he arrived, Loyd Holt was parked within sight of the corpse, along with a couple of sheriff’s deputies, but Holt was reluctant to let McKenzie get to work, not without Jurel Cade’s permission – and Cade, said the coroner, had briefly left the scene to make a call. McKenzie had convinced Holt that it might be wise to have some pictures, if only to cover Holt’s own back in the event of any questions, because rain was coming. Holt, who was so committed to watching his own back that he might have been part owl, acquiesced.

  McKenzie had only just commenced work when Jurel Cade returned and instructed him to get the fuck away from the body. Cade also ordered him to hand over any film from his camera, but Tucker McKenzie was too old and ornery to play that game, and a standoff occurred. Finally, though, McKenzie was forced to surrender the film to Cade, partly because he was not on the scene in any official capacity, and in theory the pictures might prove useful to Cade in his own inquiries; but mostly, Evan Griffin now believed, because McKenzie had discreetly taken a series of snaps of Hartley’s body with an instant camera, copies of which were now in the possession of the prisoner named Parker.

  ‘She needs to be sent to Little Rock for autopsy,’ McKenzie had told Cade, as he prepared to depart – if, he assumed, only temporarily.

  ‘No,’ said Cade, ‘she doesn’t.’

  ‘You want to explain why?’

  Cade looked to the coroner.

  ‘Tell him, Loyd.’

  ‘I believe it’s an accidental death,’ said Holt.

  ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ said McKenzie. ‘That girl has one stick jammed in her mouth and another in her vagina. This is a killing.’

  ‘You the coroner now, Tucker?’ said Cade. ‘Last time I checked, Loyd had the honor of holding that position.’

  ‘She stumbled and fell down that slope behind,’ said Holt. ‘Lot of sticks and stones on the ground here.’

  But he wouldn’t look at McKenzie as he spoke.

  ‘This is wrong,’ said McKenzie.

  ‘It’s Loyd’s decision to make,’ said Cade. ‘And mine,’ he added, ‘as chief investigator for the county. I can’t afford to waste resources on an accidental death.’

  McKenzie wanted to say more, but he held his tongue. He saw what was happening, and why. This was about the future of Burdon County, and the fortunes of the Cade family.

  This was about money.

  Much of this McKenzie later shared with Griffin over a beer at Boyd’s. It was McKenzie’s opinion, based admittedly on only a brief sight of the body, that Patricia Hartley had suffered an injury to the base of her skull, just below the bump known as the inion. It looked as though a blade might have caused it, but McKenzie couldn’t be certain because a puncture from a sharp stone might equally have been responsible. The effect had been to sever the brain from the brain stem, shutting down her nervous system. Death would have been almost instantaneous.

  And now here was another naked dead girl, with what might be a similar wound to her head, but with more injuries to her body than Patricia Hartley had suffered.

  ‘I can see no signs of disturbance,’ said McKenzie, ‘not like there was with Patricia Hartley. Whoever she is, she hasn’t been kicked around. Where she’s resting, that’s where her killer wanted her to be found.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘She’s missing two fingernails from her right hand. The ME will be able to tell for sure, but I’d say it looks like they weren’t removed, but broke off, possibly during a struggle. The hands are real clean. I’d suggest they were washed before her body was dumped, which means she may have clawed her killer. Finally, for now, you surely noticed the marks on the decedent’s wrists. They’re rope burns, and they’re deep. The skin is broken, which means the victim attempted to free herself. It also means that we should be able to pull fragments of the binding material from the wounds. They’ll be useful if you ever get as far as a prosecution, and can find the original rope.’

  Griffin finished writing down everything he’d learned. He would have no trouble remembering what McKenzie had said, but he was a meticulous man. If this was to be handled right, it had to begin now. He wasn’t about to let this girl go the way of Patricia Hartley.

  A sorry sun was scattering sickly light through pallid cloud, but it wasn’t making much difference to the temperature. And there was, as Loyd Holt had noted, a dampness to the air: Griffin could feel it penetrating his clothing, digging deep.

  ‘How long are you going to need?’ he asked McKenzie.

  ‘A couple of hours, but I’ll aim for less. What are you going to do about Loyd in the meantime, apart from sabotaging his vehicle? I sense his spine ma
y be weakening, and it was made of Jell-O to begin with.’

  ‘I may have to be more forceful with him. I’m not sure his loyalties lie where they should.’

  ‘If Cade comes, he could try to seize the evidence.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Griffin.

  He considered raising the subject of the pictures in Parker’s file before deciding to leave it for another time. He didn’t want to risk alienating McKenzie. They needed him on their side.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So get moving, Tucker.’

  Tucker McKenzie got moving.

  14

  Parker finished his coffee before dozing as the sky grew lighter. It sometimes came on him this way: a restless night would be followed by exhaustion, and he would sleep until late in the morning or into the afternoon. He tried to fight it as best he could, because he feared a time when he might be reluctant to leave his bed at all, but he was a man unmoored and his obligations were few. They could, in fact, be boiled down to one: to find the man who had taken his wife and child from this world and tear him apart.

  Sometimes he dreamed, and in his dreams he was permitted to view Susan and Jennifer, but only at one remove. They passed through vistas detached from the reality of their previous existence, and their movements were the slow, final struggles of drowning victims. On occasion, his dead family assumed other forms, the essence of them inhabiting new bodies, as though seeking to remain connected to a realm that would, in the end, erase them entirely from its cognizance. He would hold on to them as long as he could. He would hold on to them until death came for him, too.

  But even now, barely months after their murders, he was struggling to keep all those memories intact. With each day that passed, he seemed to lose one more. He could almost feel them fading, the details of faces and gestures, of words spoken, of touches given and received, falling away, color draining from them like photographic images too long exposed to light.

  I want to be with you again. I do not want to live in this world without you.

  But I have to stay.

  I will find him, the one who did this, and when I am done with him, I will search for you both. I will leave this place, and I will travel to where you are.

  Wait for me.

  Listen for me.

  I will come.

  15

  Loyd Holt might have been a poor excuse for a coroner, but he wasn’t a total dullard. A puncture to one tire might have been regarded as unlucky, but damage to two, including the spare that had sat unused in the trunk for so long, smacked to him of a conspiracy. This impression was reinforced when nobody would give him a ride back to town, make a call over the radio for someone to come out and pick him up, or even provide or secure a replacement tire. It was confirmed when he started walking, only to find Evan Griffin blocking his path.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ said Holt. ‘You’re keeping me here because you think I’m going to call Jurel.’

  ‘No,’ said Griffin, ‘I’m keeping you here because I know you’re going to call Jurel. I need more time, Loyd. Tucker’s not a man to rush, which is only right.’

  ‘And I need this job, Evan.’

  ‘Then do it properly.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that. I’ve always performed my task to the best of my abilities.’

  Which was, in Griffin’s view, part of the problem, Loyd Holt’s best being the very definition of bare adequacy.

  ‘I realize that,’ said Griffin. ‘I’m trying to do the same, but it’s going to become difficult for me from the moment you get in touch with Jurel.’

  ‘Jurel Cade is the chief investigator for the county. I have a responsibility to inform him of what’s occurred.’

  ‘You can inform him just as soon as Tucker has finished with the scene.’

  Holt practically danced on the spot with frustration.

  ‘But by then it’ll be too late!’

  ‘Too late for whom?’

  ‘For Jurel.’

  ‘You don’t serve at his favor.’

  ‘No, I serve at the favor of his entire fucking family. So do you, Evan. You may not believe you’re a political appointee, but you are. If the Cades want you gone, you’re gone, and Cargill will just have to swallow its sorrow before finding someone to take your place.’

  ‘You mean someone who’ll do as the Cades tell him?’

  Holt quit dancing. His eyes met Griffin’s, and the chief saw the native cunning concealed behind a clown’s demeanor.

  ‘Someone who’ll do right by the county,’ said Holt.

  ‘We have dead girls, Loyd.’

  ‘No, we have poor dead colored girls, Evan. That’s not the same thing. I’m sorry for what happened to them, truly I am, but we got to think of the needs of all the folk in this county and this state. We’re a couple of signatures away from a new beginning, the one we was promised, and that’ll be good for everyone, black and white.’

  And how often had Griffin heard those three words over the last year? We was promised. Better times are coming. You just have to hang in there. They’re on their way, you can bet your house on that, because we was promised.

  We was promised, we was promised, we was promised.

  ‘Not much good to that girl back there,’ said Griffin. ‘Not much good to Patricia Hartley.’

  ‘They’re both dead, Evan, so I’ll tell you this for free: they’re beyond caring. Now get out of my fucking way or I’ll have you up before Judge Hawkins for obstructing me in the commission of my duties.’

  Griffin gave it a few seconds, for dignity’s sake, before yielding the road to Holt. The little man went tramping toward Cargill, cell phone in hand.

  Griffin’s radio spoke. It was Lorrie Colson. She was with Reverend Nathan Pettle, but had held off on bringing him to the scene until Tucker McKenzie’s work was complete. But Pettle, unsurprisingly, was growing impatient. If a member of his congregation was dead, his people needed to be informed.

  ‘Tucker?’ Griffin shouted, as Knight came over to join him.

  ‘Five minutes.’

  Loyd Holt had already reached the top of the nearest rise and was now descending the other side, vanishing from sight. It looked like the ground was swallowing him up, which would have been preferable to the alternative: in a couple of minutes, if that, Holt would be on the phone to the county sheriff’s office, and Jurel Cade would come running.

  ‘Help Tucker to pack up,’ Griffin told Knight. ‘Make sure you secure everything he has, put it in the trunk of your car, and take the long road back to town.’

  Knight started moving.

  ‘And Kel?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You cover that girl. I want her nakedness concealed before the reverend gets here.’

  16

  Tilon Ward had not driven very far. He’d parked his truck on a side road, amid a smear of trees on a hill, giving him a clear view of the police activity while concealing him from sight. There he sat in the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette and thinking that, as fucked up as life could sometimes be, the possibility always existed that it could get fucked up a whole lot more. He felt a tickling on his cheek. When he scratched at it, his finger came away wet. He had not even realized he was crying.

  Tilon could have told Evan Griffin a great deal about the dead girl. He could have shared with him her identity, and where she lived. He could have described her body in intimate detail, and the sounds she made during sex. He could have offered up the taste and smell of her, and the way she spoke his name, with the emphasis on the second syllable instead of the first, because she thought it was fun to pronounce it differently from others, and by individuating him she made him more her own.

  Tilon didn’t think anyone knew about him and the girl. He’d warned her not to share the fact of their relationship with anyone, because it would stir up a world of hurt for both of them. To some, it might have resembled a commercial exchange – sex for money – but he had never really considered it to be thus, and he di
d not believe that she did either, because he sensed her affection for him was real, and he had begun to reciprocate in kind. Oh, he still gave her cash whenever they met, because she and her mother didn’t have much of their own, but it was more in the manner of a gift than payment for services offered and received – or so he told himself, and told her as well, although the truth was more complex than that, and he might have been fooling himself just as much as he was fooling her.

  Yet how odd it was that he should have been the one to discover her body, as though some force beyond human comprehension had intended it to be this way. Tilon had even briefly considered abandoning the remains, leaving them for someone else to find. By involving himself, he would inevitably draw police attention, and if the investigation uncovered the association between him and the girl, he would become a suspect. While he maintained a grudging respect, even trust, for Chief Evan Griffin, he retained none at all for Jurel Cade. The latter was looking for an excuse to move against Tilon, and if he could pin some killings on him, he would – especially these killings, because making an arrest would take a lot of the pressure off the county. But Tilon Ward knew this much: he hadn’t killed this girl, or Patricia Hartley, or anyone else, which meant that locking him up wouldn’t put an end to whatever was happening.

  Unless, of course, it did. What if the killer decided to make use of a patsy and went to ground after the arrest, leaving Tilon to suffer the consequences? The state of Arkansas had the death penalty, and wasn’t shy about sticking men with the needle. It was also, in its callous way, color-blind when it came to capital punishment, which was almost admirable unless you happened to be the white man strapped to a gurney while fingers probed for a suitable vein.