Written in Blood

by Layton Green

  What kind of hours did homicide cops work, anyway? Was he expected to mainline coffee until they broke the case, like on TV?

  He reached for his phone. One of his relatives was a patrol officer for the Atlanta Police Department, and now that Kirby and Preach were partners, he wanted to see if he could gain some insight into the mysterious arrival of Detective Joe Everson.

  “Franklin here.”

  Jesse Franklin was a second cousin on Kirby’s mother side. Kirby knew almost nothing about his dad’s family, except they were white and poor and hated black people.

  “It’s Kirb.”

  “Cuz! About time ya holla’d at ya boy.”

  “Last I checked, you weren’t blowing me up either.”

  “It’s the big city. I’ve got a lot goin’ on these days. What’s your excuse? Cow-tipping pickin’ up?”

  “Nah,” Kirby said. “Just can’t get away from the crib. Someone’s always pulling me back inside.”

  Franklin laughed. “Is that how it is? So what’s up?”

  “Just caught my first murder.”

  “Yeah? Good for you, man.”

  Kirby caught the undertone of envy. Franklin had joined the force two years before Kirby and was still on patrol.

  Then again, Atlanta was a much harder ladder to climb.

  “Listen,” Kirby said, “I was wondering if you’d heard of a guy named Joe Everson. Goes by Preach, used to be APD.”

  “I know of him. He’s a bit out of my league.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were trying to nail him.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one who drinks beet juice and trims his eyebrows. I just meant he was a hotshot homicide guy, and I’m, well, you know how it is. Knights in armor don’t mingle with the serfs.”

  “Any idea why he left?” Kirby asked.

  “He was working the Candyland Murders, had some kind of breakdown. Didn’t know he’d landed up your way.”

  “Candyland—wasn’t that the guy who lured kids into a Willy Wonka tree house and then, well, yeah. Guy was twisted,” Kirby muttered, and found himself thinking that maybe he didn’t want the sickest case out there.

  “It was bad. Never caught the guy, either.”

  “Preach didn’t handle failure too well?”

  “Nah, man—he broke down during the case. Not when they found one of the bodies, but when they found one of the kids alive up in that tree house. I don’t know the details, but it seemed strange for a guy who’s seen it all.”

  Kirby remembered the detective squatting at the crime scene, staring into the eyes of the corpse. “Maybe that’s the point, you know? That you’ve never seen it all.”

  “What would I know? I’m just a patrol guy. Preach is a legend, though. The word around here was that if things got too sticky, he’d get on a call with the man upstairs, find out some things no one else could.”

  “What are you saying?” Kirby asked, pressing the phone tighter.

  “He had this little prayer room at the station that glowed white as Gwyneth Paltrow when he went inside, and when he came back out he always had a fresh piece of evidence and knew the score of the night’s game.”

  Kirby relaxed his grip and rolled his eyes. “Bite me, cuz.”

  Franklin guffawed. “We need to get you out of Mayberry.”

  Kirby walked down the hall to check with forensics. Their evidence guru was a tall, skinny guy named Dax who was based in Chapel Hill. He had flaky pink skin and an elongated neck. Whenever he bent over his clipboard, he reminded Kirby of a flamingo.

  “Any word on the prints?” Kirby asked.

  “We found a partial that wasn’t the vic’s in the laundry room, but it wasn’t enough to ID.”

  “Damn. Anything else?”

  “We had to send the phone and laptop out to Division, so that will take a few days, depending on the level of encryption. But we found marijuana, meth, and alcohol in his system. Oh, and I believe I’ve identified the cause of the blunt force trauma.”

  “You can tell the type of weapon?”

  “It’s impossible to be certain, but the contours of the wound are consistent with the shape of the common hatchet. I’d say at least five blows, probably more.”

  “A hatchet? Like an axe?”

  “They’re different, actually. The ax head is larger but tapers only slightly from the blade to the back. True axes aren’t designed for pounding. The hatchet, on the other hand, has a full hammer head on the rear side of the blade.”

  It was then that he struck her again with all his strength, and then again, every time with the back of the hatchet and across the crown of the head.

  Kirby felt the skin on his arms prickle. “What about the crosses?”

  “The wooden one is cypress. Hand cut, not manufactured. The copper cross looks factory-made, we’re not sure where. It’s almost impossible to tell. Oh, and we found microscopic ribbon fibers on both crosses. My guess is they were attached to a string and cut loose.”

  Suddenly he noticed a ribbon round her neck . . . he succeeded in cutting through the ribbon without touching the body with the hatchet, and took it off . . . there were two crosses on the ribbon, one of cypress wood and another of copper . . .

  “Good work,” Kirby said weakly.

  After hitting the gym, Kirby drove to his sister’s trailer to babysit his nephew, his good vibes from landing the new case evaporating the closer he got. It wasn’t terrible as trailer parks went. Plenty of pine trees around, a few extra feet between the lots, no ungoverned trash heaps stinking up the place. In the spirit of Creekville, there was even a communal vegetable garden.

  But it was still a single-wide. And as anyone who had grown up in a mobile home knew, as Kirby did, the social stigma attached to living in such an undistinguished crib was more destructive than a direct hit from a tornado. And his sister Jalene still hadn’t escaped.

  An eleven-year-old girl with light brown skin and freckles, all limbs and hair, threw herself into his arms. She was a clone of her mother at that age. “Uncle Scotty! Cool jacket.”

  “Hey there, beautiful. You ready for tonight?”

  “Yep!”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Where’s the mom-ster?”

  “Right here,” said Jalene. She stepped gingerly into the room, wincing with each step. His sister had aged well, still thin and gorgeous despite the stress of raising two kids by herself.

  Kirby hurried over to support her. “How’s the hernia?”

  “A little better than yesterday. It’s supposed to work itself out in a few weeks.”

  He lowered his voice as Kayla twirled away. “Who says? The rent-a-nurse at the clinic?”

  “There’s all kinds of different hernias. This isn’t one of the bad ones.”

  “It looks pretty bad to me,” he said. “You’re sure you don’t need surgery?”

  She sucked in a breath and reached up to pat him on the cheek. “And who’s gonna pay for that, hon? The hernia fairy?”

  Kirby gritted his teeth and looked away. His sister was an office assistant, but the attorney she worked for had let her go three months before, after he had gotten a divorce and had to cut back on expenses. Kirby hated the fact that he couldn’t provide more support. He had a solid job and benefits, but a junior cop’s salary sure as hell wouldn’t cover a second rent check or uninsured medical expenses. His sister was eking by on welfare, living in fear of a medical disaster.

  His eight-year-old nephew shuffled into the room, head bowed, a serious little boy with the opposite energy of his niece. Kirby scooped him up and kissed him on the forehead. “How’s my number-one guy? Still leaving ladies in the dust like Speed Racer?”

  Jared squirmed out of his arms. Kirby’s pulse spiked as he watched his nephew, who used to greet him with a huge smile and some arcane fact about the insect world, sit cross-legged and sullen in front of the TV, as if some parasite were siphoning off his vitality.

  A bright and bookish kid, vibrant and sensitive to the world,
Jared had retreated into a shell once the bullying started. Kirby had gone with his sister to the principal’s office, only to be told that until a teacher witnessed the mistreatment, there was nothing anyone could do.

  Nothing they could do, Kirby had wanted to know, about the five pounds his nephew had lost from having his lunch repeatedly stolen? Or the bruises on his arms and chest? Or the fact that his sister’s baby boy wouldn’t look him in the eye anymore?

  Jared went to a school with a ninety percent free or reduced lunch rate, a severely undermanned staff, and elementary school kids who didn’t have discipline problems, they had criminal problems.

  Jalene leaned on Kirby as she limped to the car, her face taut from the strain. He pleaded in vain with her to let him go in her place. After she drove off with Kayla, he stood in the driveway with slumped shoulders, terrified of his sister’s condition and not ready to deal with his nephew’s dull stare, hating the incessant trailer park babble of tires on gravel and flimsy doors banging shut. He struggled to corral the feeling of helpless fury that, beneath his cheery disposition, had always defined him.

  Later that night, after Jalene and Kayla had returned, Kirby went to Greensboro and partied away his tension. He managed to put everything out of his mind, including the case, until he got a text from Preach at three a.m. asking him to meet first thing in the morning.

  Kirby knocked back one last beer as the waitress slept beside him. He couldn’t shake the weird premonition that something worse than usual was headed his way.

  8

  Preach’s rented cabin was perched on the edge of a small tract of wilderness filled with deer, red-tailed hawk, muskrat, and coyote. Now and again a bear or a bobcat wandered through. He had fallen asleep on the hammock on the screened-in porch, drifting off to the orchestra of insects. He liked to soak in the world and not feel stuck in a manufactured environment.

  The sun nudged him awake. Instead of brewing a pot of coffee, he decided to change clothes and stumble straight to Jimmy’s Corner Store, a local provisions market and café that doubled as his second office. On his way out the door, Preach stopped to straighten his one piece of art: a wooden Jesus figurine, melancholy and thoughtful, sitting lotus-style on a pointed spear precariously attached to the wooden base.

  More than ever, the figurine reflected his state of mind. One more day until therapy, he thought. One day closer—or further—from knowing whether he could have his old life back.

  “Mornin’, partner,” Kirby said, when he arrived at the café. He flashed his signature smile as he slid into the seat across from Preach. “I gotta say, I like the sound of that.”

  Preach lifted his mug. “Congratulations.”

  The café smelled like roasted coffee tinged with honey. Despite the fact that it now drew the type of crowd who demanded small-batch coffee beans and a careful pour-over, much of the store remained unchanged from his youth: the blue clapboard walls, the refrigerator selling eggs and bacon and dairy products from local farms, the dry goods shelves that stocked regional specialties like spiced pepper relish, Cackalacky marinade, and elderberry preserves.

  His father used to take him to Jimmy’s after elementary school on warm Friday afternoons, when they had free homemade ice cream for kids. Often, his father would bring his dulcimer and join impromptu jam sessions on the patio while Preach played on the lawn. He cherished the memories of his parents from before he was old enough for them to impose their ideologies on him.

  Kirby stirred a packet of honey into his mug, which looked like it contained some type of fruity, green-tea concoction. “Late night, my man?” Kirby asked. “Your text came in at three a.m.”

  “I was up reading.” “Russian literature?” Preach nodded.

  “Anything useful?” Kirby asked.

  “I’m starting to wonder if the details of the murder aren’t secondary.” Kirby waited for him to continue, then spread his hands. “You gonna kill a brother with suspense?”

  A thought had broken Preach’s concentration—if recreating Dostoevsky’s crime was so important, why had Farley’s killer chosen to murder a man instead of a woman? Was it the killer’s signature on the crime—a truly random act?

  If Farley was specifically chosen, however, then it meant the crime scene was a setup—or that there was another, deeper, meaning.

  “Hmm? Sorry. The psychological state of the killer, that’s the thrust of the novel. Why he does what he does, and how he deals with it.”

  “Why’d he do it in the novel?” Kirby asked. “Because he could.”

  “Come again?”

  “Raskolnikov believed in the idea that certain men, he calls them Napoleons, are justified in whatever actions they take—including murder—if it allows them to break out of their circumstances and achieve great things in life. Similar to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman. Or joining a reality show.”

  Kirby rolled up his sleeves. “I’m not that edu-ma-cated, but do you mean he killed someone because he thought he was entitled to?”

  “Sort of. He was broke and powerless but thought he was destined for greatness. In his mind, the only way to be sure was to kill and rob a random old woman.”

  “So he could find out if he really was a Napoleon.” “Yeah,” Preach said. “That’s my take so far.”

  “That’s whack.”

  Kirby stopped to eye an athletic woman wearing yoga pants and a hijab wind her way to a tattered armchair in the corner, next to a grizzled old man strumming a folk tune. “The blood under the washer at Farley’s house—did that happen in the book? The killer stick around like that?”

  “The opposite. He ended up killing two people, almost got caught, and had to sneak away. All of his planning went out the window in the heat of the moment.”

  “So whatever the murders might have in common,” Kirby said, “Farley’s killer was smoother than the guy in the book.”

  “Calmer, more careful,” Preach murmured. “Not subject to the same doubts.”

  Kirby ran his thumb nervously along his teacup, then gave an update on the forensic report. Preach caught Kirby up on the interview with Belker, then pushed away from the table. “Let’s go visit the neighbors.”

  It was a clear and frigid morning, unseasonably cold for late October. Preach donned his wool cap and gloves. Kirby was wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket, blowing on his hands to keep warm.

  “Feel good to be in plainclothes?” Preach asked.

  “Yeah, except for the polar vortex. Since when do those cross the Mason-Dixon line? I don’t care about politics, but people need to chill with the nitrogen emissions so black people don’t freeze to death in the South.”

  Preach chuckled. “Don’t you drive an SUV?”

  “It’s a Jeep, Preach. An old Cherokee. That’s different.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because I look fly driving it to the gym.”

  They spent the bulk of the day re-questioning the residents of Farley Robertson’s townhouse complex nestled in the Creekville woods. The interviews turned out to be a waste. Early forensic results confirmed the murder had occurred late Tuesday night, probably between two and three a.m. Farley owned an end unit, and his sole neighbor was a spinster who sat by her window most of the day and went to bed at midnight. She claimed Farley had arrived home just before she turned in, and no one else had entered his condo. At least while she was awake.

  According to his neighbors, Farley Robertson was a polite and fastidious man who put out his recycling on time, petted the neighborhood dogs, and waved at the babies in the strollers. A budding author in the complex, a waitress with a PhD in East Asian religions, heralded Farley as a champion of local artists who promised her a signing at his bookstore when she was published.

  A set of French doors in the rear of Farley’s townhouse opened onto a small wooden porch. Through the half-naked trees, Preach could make out the backs of single-family residences poking out from an adjoining neighborhood.

  Preach ste
pped into the woods. Beds of colored leaves glittered like gemstones in the rays of sunlight that reached the forest floor. A woodpecker hammered in the distance, and the tops of hundred-foot pines swayed as if made of rubber.

  Ten paces inside the woods, he spotted a beaten-down path paralleling the line of townhomes. He cocked his head at Kirby, and they followed the trail past Farley’s complex to where it adjoined a nature trail.

  “Pretty good escape route,” Kirby said. “Killer could have used a dirt bike, since no one saw a strange car.”

  Preach kept walking, though he knew the trail could lead all the way to Chapel Hill. The air was fresh and dry, leaves crackled underfoot. A family of deer eyed them as they walked. A hundred yards in, he paused when the trail passed behind the small office complex where his aunt worked, and then paralleled a wide creek. Stone supports buttressed a trestle high above the water.

  “I feel you,” Kirby said, when Preach didn’t move. “This could take all day.”

  Preach pointed to their left, at a steep side path that led up the incline, right to the railroad tracks.

  Tracks that Preach knew, from his own childhood jaunts and from his visit the previous evening, passed right by J. T. Belker’s house.

  He told his partner.

  “That’s awfully convenient,” Kirby said. “Pay him another visit?”

  “Let’s talk to Damian Black first. He just flew back from New York.”

  “So he was gone the night of the murder?”

  “No, he was here. He flew out yesterday for a one-day writing convention.”

  “We have any reason to suspect him? Business dispute? Lover’s quarrel?”

  Preach checked his watch. Damian should be home by now. “We’re about to find out.”

  9

  Less than five minutes outside Creekville, the houses and businesses disappeared, replaced by narrow country lanes and corridors of trees. Preach lowered his visor as they drove west, straight into a setting sun that lit the road with a radioactive glow.

  Ten minutes later they turned onto a driveway that wound through a dense pine forest for a quarter mile before ending at a house that brought to mind a Faulkner setting crossed with the Brothers Grimm. It was a white, two-story farmhouse manor, encircled by a wraparound porch supported by ornate pillars. Atop the third story was a pyramidal tower that jutted upward like a wizard’s hat, complete with gargoyles cavorting on the downspouts.