by Layton Green
Jan. 10—Wind, rain, the cold a stinging slap to the face. I lie in bed and the novel lies unfinished, wallowing in a state of entropy, anchored by self-delusion.
I am never at rest. Filled with discontent that rises inside me like bile. What will happen, I wonder, when the acid spills in bright green drops and forms rivulets and then a river, a burning river, that scorches the green and fertile earth around me?
I am awed by the vast unrealized potential of my actions. Of the power of sheer human will.
We cannot control the amount of good we do to others in this life. We are limited by means, circumstance.
But we can control the evil.
May 1—Query: is the entire human race an afterthought, a mistake, a failed experiment by God? Virus-ridden puddles of DNA given too much free will and abandoned to a cosmic junkyard? Our brains swimming in bacteria like an ocean bottom, devising calculus and poetry while preyed upon by hordes of invisible, mindless things? I understand the evil of man, but not the capriciousness of God.
July 23—We can only take so much before we burst. Yes, all of us. It is a certainty of the human condition that we all possess a breaking point.
Today, I have found mine.
August 23—I’ve done it!! Taken that first all-important step on my journey. Rasky would be so proud. How do I feel on my mensiversary, I ask myself? How did Alexander the Great feel when he crossed the Hellespont? Napoleon at Alexandria? Mankind when he latched onto the gray and bloated moon, trod on its lifeless, pockmarked surface as a child first grasps its mother’s nipple?
Hopeful, fulfilled.
Anxious for more.
October 28—Farley Robertson has finally been put in his place. I hope he fucking burns.
Preach set down the journal with a chill.
But we can control the evil.
His chill turned into prickly little bumps of unease when he confirmed a few suspicions about the dates.
July 23 was the same date Belker had received the email from Farley Robertson stating he was rejecting Belker’s novel.
A mensiversary, Preach discovered, was a term signifying a commemoration one month after a significant event. August 23 mentioned an all-important step. What had Belker done?
And October 28, the shortest and last entry in the journal, was the day Farley Robertson was murdered.
Kirby lay on his back in a king-size bed at a ritzy hotel in Chapel Hill. Monica Hutchinson collapsed on his chest, shuddering through her orgasm.
She eased off him, bare hips swaying as she strutted to the marble-tiled bathroom, straight blond hair falling down her back like a spool of golden thread.
Kirby wasn’t one of those black men who fantasized about snagging a white girl. Maybe it was because his dad was white and the novelty factor was low, but he had yet to meet a white woman who could be with him and not be self-conscious about it. They were either ashamed or trying too hard not to be.
The über-liberal locals were almost worse than the racists back home: sleeping with him was a badge of honor in Creekville’s socially conscious circles. Even better if they held hands at the farmer’s market on Sunday mornings. The last white girl Kirby had dated, an anthropology PhD candidate at UNC, had wanted to adopt a Nepalese orphan with him. She had probably been fantasizing about the social cachet—a black baby daddy and a little brown baby, not from Africa or some other cliché place, but from Nepal, no less! It might even be the next Dalai Lama.
Kirby had told her that if she wanted a baby from Nepal, she should marry a Sherpa. And buy a big furry coat made of slaughtered baby minks, because it was butt-ass cold there, and everyone was too poor to be PC.
At least Monica was straightforward. She just wanted a good lay and information on the case.
She reclined next to him. “You know how to keep a girl happy,” she purred.
“It’s one of my many talents I feel will translate to the big screen.”
The reporter put her chin on her hands and looked at him. Her eyes were as clear and pale blue as a glacier. “Do you have anything new?”
“Jeopardizing my career so you could break the story wasn’t enough?”
“No one will ever know.” Her tongue flicked into his ear. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“The truth always comes out at the worst time. Haven’t you heard of Shakespeare?”
“This is real life, darling, not a story. Politicians lie, businessmen cheat, people do whatever it takes to get famous.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
He glanced at the clock. Less than an hour remained before the patrol officer parked at his sister’s trailer expected him to return. Kirby was supposed to be running down a lead.
Monica’s voice turned to maple syrup as her thigh slid over his leg. “You’re not sure about Belker, are you? You still think it might be Mac Dobbins.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Or is there a new suspect?”
The meeting with Elliott Fenton ran through his mind. If Kirby even hinted at the attorney’s involvement and it came back on him, Elliott would have Kirby’s badge stapled to his forehead. “Nah,” he said. “You know everything I do.”
“Where did Detective Everson go tonight?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“A detective not telling his partner where he’s going during a major investigation?”
Kirby shifted to look at her. “We’ve got personal lives. Do you think he knows where I am right now?”
“No, I just think you lied to him.”
He moved her leg off him. “Preach is good people.”
“He’s also a disgraced detective heading up a double murder.”
“I mean it, Monica. Leave him out of this. If there were any problems with his record they’d handle it internally.”
She stroked the insides of his thighs until he hardened again. “You said this is the second time he’s gone off the grid.”
It wasn’t as if Kirby was trading sex for information; they had hooked up long before that was in play. His dilemma was with his own conscience. Leaking a story was one thing, keeping tabs on his partner another.
She climbed on top of him, breasts swaying against his chest, hair spilling into his face. “If it’s not us, it’ll be someone else.”
Kirby knew he wasn’t athletic enough to be a pro, smart enough for a top degree, lucky enough for anything to change. He had a flash of his sister, barefoot and pregnant in their trailer when she was seventeen, bawling on his shoulder after her boyfriend left her. Spreading his seed and drifting to the next town just like their father had done, pollen floating on the warm southern breeze.
“Find out where he goes,” Monica said, purring as they fell into rhythm. “We’ll break this case together.”
Kayla handing food stamps to the cashier. Jared bullied by poor white trash in that cow patty of a school. Jalene hunching as she walked, cradling her hernia, living every single day on the edge of a thousand-foot cliff.
Monica rocked with him. “You’ll look great on camera.”
His voice was husky when he spoke, and she mistook it for desire.
Preach woke to rays of weak yellow light slanting through the trees. He had fallen asleep upright on the couch, his left hand on his gun. Beside him, Ari’s chest fluttered with the soft breath of sleep.
He felt tired and uneven, saddled with tension. He had dreamt of dark things, of damp cellars and bare prison walls, of a tree house full of horrors hidden deep in the Georgia woods.
He gently extricated himself from Ari and padded to the kitchen. The aroma of fresh coffee helped him relax, and he took his mug to the hammock. The air was thick and smelled of wet leaves.
His pulse quickened as he pondered the investigation, which was starting to feel like a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece right in the center. A collection of spokes with no hub.
It was possible the novels were just an ingenious diversion. But that didn’t ring true. He still believed the crime scenes were a message, but
to whom? To anyone who dared inhibit the desires of a megalomaniacal writer? To literature-loving interlopers in the affairs of Mac Dobbins?
Preach had found no mention of the Byronic Wilderness Society on the Internet or in the police database. Even if Damian, Farley, and Elliott had all been members of the same club all those years ago, so what? They liked literature and had formed a silly, trite clique in high school. So had millions of other people.
Except not all cliques had two key members who turned up dead within a week of each other.
Maybe he was grasping. Creekville was a small town, its long-time citizens bound to be connected in various ways. Belker was years younger than Damian and Farley and had been raised near Charlotte. Mac hadn’t even grown up in North Carolina.
He paced the screen porch in disgust. Any cop could work the clues, the physical evidence. What had always set Preach apart was that he understood people.
But he was failing. Had the return to his hometown thrown a veil of familiarity over his eyes? Had his last case damaged his ability to see behind the curtain?
His cell buzzed. Chief Higgins.
“I need you here,” she said.
He glanced at Ari, still asleep on the couch, limbs tucked into her chest as if forming a protective shell. “What’s up?”
“Belker wants to talk.”
31
Preach woke Ari and followed her to a popular café on campus. He told her to stay inside and stick to crowds of people. He would work on getting someone assigned to watch her at night.
Their parting had been awkward, two people who knew something had started but didn’t know what.
Maybe it was better they kept getting interrupted, he thought.
Maybe it was a sign.
When he pulled into the station, a group of reporters descended on his car like seagulls on a discarded piece of bread. He put his head down and waded through them.
Kirby was at his desk, eyes grim and haggard. Preach nodded at him and went straight to the chief. She was sitting in her office with a steaming cup of tea, kneading a stress ball with a yin-yang symbol painted on the surface.
“Belker’s ready to see me?” Preach asked.
“Yep.”
“Any idea why?”
“Said he’ll only tell you.” She stopped kneading the ball. “How are you holding up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do I need to say it?” she asked softly. “You’re seeing your therapist?”
“I am,” he said evenly.
Chief Higgins glanced out the window, at the media milling about the parking lot and the bucolic backdrop of oaks and historic brick buildings. “The mayor’s pressing us hard to wrap this up with the suspect in custody.”
“You tell the mayor that Mac Dobbins is out of control and we need more men. I can’t protect my people.”
“I did. Her hands are tied until the budget meeting.”
“That’s because they’re not her people.”
Chief Higgins pressed her fingers deeper into the ball, then released one of her deep, therapeutic sighs. “Go see Belker. Nail this down before this circus gets any wilder.”
“Good morning, Detective,” Belker said, with his typical acerbic tone.
The writer was sequestered in the basement of the building housing the police station, in a low-ceilinged cell with white cement walls. A metal, diamond-patterned cage separated detective and prisoner.
Preach waited, but the writer just stood there, grinning at him.
“You want me to believe you think this is a game,” Preach said, “but you’re posturing. What did you mean when you wrote that you could control the evil in your life? That you’d taken ‘that first all-important step’?”
“You read my journal?” Belker asked in surprise.
“I did.”
“Then what do you think I meant?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what a jury will think.”
“It matters to me.”
Preach looked him in the eye. “I think, without a doubt, that you wanted to kill Farley Robertson and Damian Black.”
Belker’s grin turned lopsided and ugly. “But you’re not sure if I did.”
“There doesn’t have to be certainty. Just lack of reasonable doubt.”
“Ah, yes. Our vaunted justice system. The one that has served our society so diligently and left a third of us saddled with a criminal record. Or is it just that human nature is that irrepressible?”
Preach walked slowly over to stand in front of him, his footsteps echoing in the silence of the hall. “Why’d you ask for me?”
“You want to know where my money went, Detective? 2881 Prospect Street. Your answer is there. I give you my word.”
“The anonymous woman?”
“She was living at that address. That’s all I know.”
“Why’d you give the money to her?”
Belker remained silent.
“Why the games? Why not give me the address at your house?”
“Would it have kept me out of jail?”
“No,” Preach said.
“As I thought. I was going to consult an attorney but changed my mind.”
Preach’s face tightened in frustration. He didn’t know what game Belker was playing, and he was far from ready to discount what he had read in the journal.
On the other hand, he wasn’t comfortable with the possibility of having the wrong person behind bars. Especially if it meant Mac Dobbins went free.
“What do you know about the literary references at the crime scenes?”
“Less than you, I suspect.”
Preach took a stab. “What about the Byronic Wilderness Society?”
“The what?” Belker’s perplexed stare looked genuine.
Preach’s next words came low and hard. “If you’re wasting my time, I’ll make sure your unpublished novel, the one that might benefit from a sudden surge of notoriety from this case, never sees the light of day.”
Belker’s forced joviality melted like plastic on a hot stove.
“I’ll tie it up as evidence,” Preach said, turning on his heel to leave, “and bury it in a hole.”
Silence followed him up the stairs.
Preach stopped by his desk to check his calendar. He thought he had two more days before his next appointment with Aunt Janice, but he wanted to make sure.
Just before he sat in his squeaky black office chair, he noticed the seat was pushed out and facing to the right.
When it came to certain things, Preach was a very careful man, almost obsessive. He always pushed his chair straight underneath the desk, facing the computer. Always.
He stood in front of his desk, still as stone. The department employed a janitorial service, but they only cleaned the floors once a week. And they had never left his chair in a different position.
He checked the rest of his work area but noticed nothing else out of place. Maybe a new janitor had taken over, someone careless. Maybe, just this once, Preach had left in a hurry and forgotten to replace his chair in the same position.
Or maybe someone had been at his desk.
He quietly took his emergency fingerprint kit out of a drawer, dusted for prints, lifted a few that were probably his own, and put the kit in his jacket pocket. He could drop it off with evidence later.
Kirby walked over. Preach caught him up on the night before, as well as the conversation with Belker. His partner may or may not have talked to the press, but he knew everything Preach did, and he didn’t think Kirby was dirty. And he sure as hell wasn’t working with Mac Dobbins, not after what had happened to his family.
Before they left, Preach found Terry at his cubicle. “How’s it coming with the Pen Oak Press authors? Anyone I need to follow up with?”
“There’s only three besides Belker, and none of them have a beef.”
“Did you dig deep? Check their contracts, financial situations?”
“They all have solid day jo
bs. Two are under contract for another book, the other’s a poet who was shocked he was published in the first place. He dedicated the book to Damian and Farley. Oh, and most of Damian’s inheritance goes to his mother. She lives in a nursing home in Wilmington.”
Preach gave a slow nod. “You got some more time?”
Terry swallowed his last bite of breakfast sandwich. “Yeah, of course.”
“Good. I need you to go to Creekville High and find copies of the literary journal printed while Damian Black and Farley Robertson were in attendance. I also need old yearbooks. And while you’re there, see if anyone’s heard of the Byronic Wilderness Society.”
“The what?”
Preach spelled it out for him.
“And if someone has?”
“Let me know.”
Terry scribbled everything down. Kirby came back over, holding his coat and a cup of coffee.
Preach set the GPS on his phone for 2881 Prospect Street.
32
The address Belker had given them was a homeless shelter.
Preach shut the car door and slowly approached the converted Queen Anne. The building was a block off Main Street, a tidy property with a wraparound porch, shaded by pine and magnolia. A gravel walkway wound past a vegetable garden and a bird bath.
The Nondenominational Center for Social Services, a handsome stone sign proclaimed. A woman in a flannel shirt and stained blue trousers was sitting on the front porch, staring slack-jawed into the garden.
What is Belker playing at?
The officers moved inside, through a hallway smelling of ammonia and into a tired director’s office filled with file cabinets and wooden plaques showcasing the center’s public service awards.
A toned Native American woman in her thirties sat behind a drafting desk. Her hair was cropped close on the sides, and an eagle-shaped medallion rested against the hollow of her throat.
Preach took a seat and flashed his badge, causing her eyebrows to rise. He told her the basics and showed her the photo of Belker.
“He doesn’t look familiar,” she said. “You think he spent time here, as a guest?”