The Dirty South - Charlie Parker Series 18 (2020)

by Connolly, John

  ‘You make them sound like criminals.’

  ‘They’ll be pleased to hear that.’

  ‘Why?’

  Parker’s smile showed only a little light.

  ‘Because that’s exactly what they are.’

  87

  An exhausted Tucker McKenzie arrived at the state crime laboratory in Little Rock with material from the scene of the Polk County fire; the accumulated evidence from one killing, that of Denny Rhinehart in Cargill; and his notes and film from the scene of Reverend Nathan Pettle’s botched attempt at self-destruction. McKenzie could have waited until morning before driving up, but given how busy he was currently being kept, he fully expected the new day to bring fresh calamities.

  He was also carrying, in a cooler box, the remains of a dead possum.

  88

  Only a handful of drinkers remained in Boyd’s by the time Parker arrived, but they all watched him cross the bar and slip into a booth – coincidentally, the same booth he’d been occupying when Evan Griffin first came calling. It was now partially filled by a large, overweight man who appeared to have stepped from an old dime novel. He wore a crumpled tan suit, and a yellow silk tie resembling a rag dipped in mustard. Upon closer examination, Parker saw that small dancing skeletons adorned the tie. On the table beside the visitor sat a brown fedora, similar to the one he had been wearing when he and Parker first met over the body of a woman named Jenny Ohrbach. Back then Parker had been a detective third grade, and the man currently sitting opposite him was still just Special Agent Woolrich of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Now he was Assistant SAC Woolrich of the bureau’s New Orleans field office. He was also the source of all Parker’s information on unusual murder scenes and possible serial killings, including the deaths of Estella Jackson and Patricia Hartley which had led Parker to this town; and of the intelligence on Leonard Cresil.

  Only days after Parker had buried his wife and child, Woolrich had approached him to offer his sympathies, and assure him that he would do all in his power to aid the investigation into the murders. And when Parker resigned from the NYPD, Woolrich had again come forward, this time in a less formal capacity, and invited him for a drink, although by then Parker had already forsworn alcohol, and much else.

  ‘I understand your reasons for leaving the force,’ Woolrich had told Parker as they sat together in Chumley’s, the old West Village speakeasy. ‘It’s not for me to tell you that you’re doing the right or wrong thing, because it’s your decision to make. But if you’re serious about looking for whoever did this, perhaps I can be of assistance.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We suspect Susan and Jennifer weren’t the first. What was done to them was too accomplished for that. There must be false starts, apprentice work. Their killer will have left other bodies: maybe not displayed in the same way, because otherwise the Bureau would be all over it, but he’s had practice. I’ll send you what I can. Most of it you can set aside after a single glance and never look at again, but who knows what you might notice?’

  Woolrich had been as good as his word, and now here he was in Cargill, with a beer in front of him and a few shards of french fries congealing in a basket. They exchanged a handshake and made some small talk. Woolrich was divorced, and alienated from his only daughter, Lisa. While in New York, he’d been seeing a nurse named Judy, who lived in Boston. The distance had suited both of them, but Woolrich wasn’t sure if this would continue to be the case now that he was based in New Orleans.

  ‘You want one?’ said Woolrich, shaking the near-empty beer bottle.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I forgot. You don’t do that anymore. So: Did you kill him?’

  ‘Kill who?’

  ‘Johnny Friday.’

  Parker extended his hands, holding the wrists close together as though in anticipation of the bite of cuffs.

  ‘I’m not wearing a wire,’ said Woolrich, ‘if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ said Parker. ‘But if you’re looking for a confession, you’ve traveled a long way for nothing.’

  ‘It wasn’t so far to come. I had business in Shreveport before driving on to Little Rock. One of the local boys, Randall Butcher, is in big trouble: bribery, wire fraud, all that good stuff beloved of federal prosecutors.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Butcher nurses ambitions of expanding his business interests into northern Louisiana and east Texas, perhaps even New Orleans and Baton Rouge, so he was on my radar. As it happened, I arrived just in time for him to vanish, but he’ll turn up. Anyway, I didn’t drive three hours just to talk about Randall Butcher, or Johnny Friday – who won’t be missed, so no one is going to be looking too hard for whoever flipped his switch.’

  Woolrich wet his mouth with the beer.

  ‘Do you have news?’ said Parker. ‘About Susan and Jennifer?’

  ‘I wish I did,’ said Woolrich, ‘but no.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘To ask you the same question.’

  ‘Estella Jackson and Patricia Hartley. Their deaths were among the files you sent me.’

  ‘Strange that they should have been the ones to catch your attention.’

  ‘There were others. This is the fourth town I’ve visited in ten days, and the eleventh unsolved case I’ve looked into since the start of the year.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So what makes this one different? Why stay?’

  ‘Nobody in the other towns suggested that I should.’ Parker thought for a moment. ‘And perhaps because I can.’

  ‘Can what?’

  ‘Take your pick: can help, can advise. Or just can. I have nowhere else to go, except back to New York. All these cases have been dead ends so far. By staying here, there’s a chance that the whole effort may not prove pointless.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Woolrich. ‘I’m still looking for similarities that might help. If you want me to stop …’

  Parker took a deep breath.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘And I apologize.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For being short with you ever since I arrived here tonight. I’m grateful for what you’ve done. It’s frustration on my part, and not only because the leads you sent me haven’t panned out. This whole county is toxic, and it’s as though the fumes are blinding me to something about these killings that I should be able to see.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Woolrich. ‘I have nothing better to do than listen.’

  So Parker told him. He went through everything he had seen, heard, and learned so far, right up to the attempted suicide of Reverend Nathan Pettle. He excluded only the tale of the truck that had followed him from Griffin’s house, because that would have involved mentioning the car that had intervened in the pursuit – or, more particularly, its occupants.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Woolrich, when Parker had finished. ‘This is one fucked-up county.’

  ‘Confirming the diagnosis doesn’t cure the disease.’

  ‘It sounds like you have a suspect, so the cure is to catch him.’

  ‘Hollis Ward as the chief suspect still doesn’t make sense to me. The Cades might have cut him loose after his conviction, but it’s a big step from being dismissed to killing women on their territory, especially after so much time has gone by. And from what I’ve learned of him, Ward wasn’t a man to keep a low profile, yet somehow he’s contrived to remain hidden for years.’

  ‘But this guy Rauls believes Ward might have murdered Estella Jackson,’ said Woolrich, ‘which means there’s precedent.’

  ‘Yes, but Jurel Cade raised the possibility of two killers, and the medical examiner, Dr Temple, who conducted the autopsy on Donna Lee Kernigan, didn’t dismiss it either, according to Chief Griffin.’

  ‘You always had a fondness for making situations more complicated than they need to be.’

  ‘This one was already complicated when I got here.’
<
br />   ‘Then look at it again, but from a different perspective,’ said Woolrich. ‘Why should these killings have recommenced now, so long after Estella Jackson’s murder?’

  ‘Kovas. There can be no other reason.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I’m no longer sure about anything, but my gut says it’s down to Kovas. Donna Lee Kernigan’s body was left within sight of land earmarked for development by the company and owned by the Cades.’

  ‘But Patricia Hartley’s body was dumped elsewhere.’

  ‘Yet if Griffin is right, her remains were first left on federal land, because the killer hoped that would bring in outside agencies to investigate. Jurel Cade’s intervention meant that didn’t happen, so the killer had to try again, this time closer to the proposed Kovas site.’

  ‘Why not dump Kernigan on the site itself?’

  ‘It’s fenced off, and the Cades have already commenced sprucing it up in preparation for the laying of foundations, so the area is exposed. I’m surprised they haven’t already strung a ribbon from some trees and started sharpening a big pair of ceremonial scissors. Gaining access to the site wouldn’t have been impossible, or even difficult, but it would have required effort and risk. Leaving Kernigan’s body nearby would have been less trouble for almost the same reward.’

  ‘So someone wants to see the Kovas deal go up in black smoke?’ said Woolrich.

  ‘Which will ruin the Cades.’

  ‘And the entire county, as well as damaging the state.’

  ‘It feels personal,’ said Parker. ‘I think the Cades are the target.’

  ‘Okay, let’s go with it,’ said Woolrich. ‘If that’s the case, the identities of the victims themselves – their color, sex, age – are of no consequence. He picked them because they were easy, or came his way at the right time. Sometimes the personal is concealed by the impersonal, and vice versa.’

  For a moment, Parker was distracted. Woolrich’s use of those words – personal and impersonal – brought him back to the hours and days following the murders of Susan and Jennifer. It was the question the police had asked, and that he had asked of himself: Was the choice of victims random or specific? Had their killer waited until Parker was away from the house before striking, or had he hoped to take Parker down as well? How had the killer chosen them? It wasn’t a crime of opportunity, but one that had required careful planning so the scene could be properly organized. Their killer had made a form of pietà out of their remains, leaving his daughter’s body stretched across her mother’s lap. But why target Susan and Jennifer? What if, as Woolrich was suggesting in the case of the Cargill killings, they had been selected only out of expediency? Yet the question remained: How had the killer of his family come to select them?

  Sometimes the personal is concealed by the impersonal.

  And vice versa.

  But now Woolrich was speaking again, calling him back.

  ‘I’m curious,’ Woolrich was saying. ‘If a personal vendetta against the Cades is behind what’s happening, why not kill one or all of them and be done with it?’

  Parker took this in. The question had not previously entered his mind. Why not kill one of the Cades? Why go to the trouble of trying to ruin them in this way?

  ‘He wants the Cade family to witness its own fall,’ he said at last.

  ‘And also, he isn’t roaming,’ said Woolrich. ‘He’s murdering and dumping in a defined territory, and taking his victims from the same locality.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning it’s a good way to get caught. The real human predators keep moving.’

  ‘You think he doesn’t realize that?’ said Parker.

  ‘He may just be stupid, but this doesn’t strike me as the work of someone entirely lacking in intelligence.’

  ‘Unless it’s the point.’

  ‘That he wants to be caught?’

  ‘Eventually,’ said Parker. ‘Because whatever revelation his capture brings with it will ensure that everything – the Kovas deal, the Cades, all of it – is destroyed.’

  He was close now, but still the final link dangled frustratingly beyond his grasp.

  The bartender announced last call. Woolrich lifted his bottle and weighed it in his hand, as though debating whether he would be happier were it to become full again or remain empty. In the end, he decided on the latter and dropped some bills on the table.

  ‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘What about this Leonard Cresil?’

  ‘I’d hoped that he wasn’t going to be a problem in the short term,’ said Parker, remembering the benighted truck and its occupants. ‘I may have been mistaken.’

  ‘Did you confront him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course you did. I’m surprised you didn’t slap his face with a glove and challenge him to a duel.’

  ‘Absent the glove, that’s close to what went down.’

  ‘You’re not bereft of troubles as it is. Why ask for more?’

  ‘Cresil was about to crowd me. I wanted space to move.’

  ‘If you like, we can put a foot on his neck. Cresil’s time is coming. He’s running out of road, and he knows it.’

  ‘No,’ said Parker, ‘I have it in hand now.’

  ‘If you’re certain.’ Woolrich picked up his hat and jammed it on his head.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ said Parker.

  ‘Not here. Too many people in this county are winding up dead. I’ll start heading home and find somewhere to sleep along the way. I like driving in the dark. It’s more conducive to reflection.’

  Together they walked from the bar.

  ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up,’ said Woolrich, ‘but I might, just might, have better news about Susan and Jennifer when next we meet. It’s a whisper, but it could grow louder over time.’

  ‘Should I come down to New Orleans?’

  Parker heard the eagerness in his own voice, or the desperation.

  ‘No, not yet. If it sounds promising, I’ll let you know.’

  The night was mild and quiet, but the town didn’t look much better in the dark than it did in daylight, and the air was feculent.

  ‘Why would anybody come here?’ said Woolrich.

  ‘I came.’

  ‘To hunt, not to settle.’

  ‘I’ll be moving along when this is over.’

  ‘Back to New York?’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘And after?’

  ‘Who can say?’

  Woolrich placed a hand on the back of Parker’s neck. His palm was warm and damp.

  ‘Bird,’ he said – sadly, fondly. Woolrich was one of the few who still called Parker by that name. Parker had given up asking him not to, just as he had with the others who liked to use it. The sobriquet held no meaning, except to remind him of the seeming impossibility of any escape from all that bound him to this earth. Now, with Woolrich beside him, he felt something of the same sorrow that had overcome him in the parking lot of the Dairy Bell earlier that day. Without Woolrich and a handful of other men he would be entirely alone, and it struck him that all were older than he, as though he were seeking to create out of them some amalgam of a father.

  ‘Why are you helping me?’ said Parker.

  ‘Because I can. If you want more than that, you’re destined to be disappointed.’

  ‘Then “because I can” will have to do.’

  ‘It will, for both of us.’ Woolrich turned his back on Parker and ambled toward his car. ‘I’ll be seeing you, somewhere down the road.’

  89

  Upon returning home from his unsuccessful mission to put the investigator named Parker out of commission, Ryan Vinson had eaten a bag of Doritos, finished off what remained of the bottle of Crown Royal and, with nothing better to do, opened another. He then re-watched – for the hundredth time, or thereabouts – his worn copy of Chuck Norris’s Delta Force, and concluded that life, all things considered, was good: he had a truck, a home, a big TV, and friends on whom he
could rely in times of crisis. The only cloud on his horizon bore the shape of Pruitt Dix, but Vinson knew Dix from way back and was confident in his ability to talk him around on the Parker business. If that didn’t work, Vinson would resort to pleading. He wasn’t proud.

  Vinson went to bed shortly after 2 A.M., and set his alarm clock for six hours later.

  Because he was, as has already been established, an optimist.

  Ryan Vinson, the optimist, woke to the sight of a tall masked man standing over his bed, and another, smaller masked man seated to his left, the latter holding a gun to Vinson’s temple. Vinson wouldn’t have woken at all, even allowing for the touch of the gun, if the standing man hadn’t rapped him hard on the forehead with his knuckles. Vinson could only see the gun by moving his head slightly, which caused the intruder holding it to press the muzzle even harder against his temple. No one had ever pointed a gun at Ryan Vinson before, never mind poked him in the head with one. He really didn’t like it.

  ‘How you doin’?’ said the man who wasn’t holding the gun, and was therefore of marginally less immediate concern to Vinson. He sounded black, which didn’t make Vinson feel any better. Vinson didn’t have any black friends, and he guessed that this man’s presence in his life wasn’t about to alter that state of affairs substantially.

  ‘Not so good,’ said Vinson.

  ‘You ought to clean your house more often. I think I got bitten by a flea.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you should be more aware of your domestic and personal hygiene. Being bitten has put me in a bad mood, and I was already feeling sore. Is this your truck?’

  He held up a gloved hand to show Vinson a photograph taken with an instant camera.

  ‘I can’t see,’ said Vinson. ‘It’s too dark.’

  The man holding the gun turned on the bedside lamp with his free hand so that Vinson could see the picture better. It did indeed show Vinson’s beloved truck sitting in his driveway.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Vinson, ‘that’s my truck.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Actually, this is your truck.’