Stone Cribs: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  The stairs were a well, and I was at the bottom of it. Anyone with a few brains and a well-placed kick could put me out of commission immediately.

  If the floor was made of wood, the stairs would be also. The house was old, which meant that it had soft spots, probably in the middle.

  There was a banister on the left, but none on the right. I used the banister as a brace, set my left foot on the left side of the third step, and climbed, three steps at a time, never touching the middle of the wood.

  The stairs didn’t creak once.

  When I reached the top, I found a closed door. All my caution had been for nothing.

  I grabbed the knob—it was large, old, and metal—and turned it silently. Then I slammed the door inward as hard as I could, planning to knock anyone standing near it off balance.

  No one was there.

  I found the upstairs wall switch and flicked it on. The mess continued up here. Storage cupboards had been emptied onto the floor—clothing, linen, and yellowed envelopes mounded in the narrow hallway.

  There were two rooms up here. I turned on the lights in each. The first was a study—papers scattered everywhere, the desk ruined, a safe knocked on its side, but still closed.

  The second was Johnson’s bedroom. The mattress was half off his bed, and a chair was tipped over. A television, which he had perched near the window, lay on the floor, its screen shattered.

  I checked the closets, and let out a small sigh.

  The Shipleys and I were alone.

  I made my way back down the stairs and into the kitchen. The Shipleys hadn’t moved.

  “Whoever did this is long gone,” I said.

  Shipley’s shoulders moved in a visible sigh. Paulette’s eyes narrowed, her face becoming a replica of Marvella’s just an hour ago. They had the same fierceness.

  “Truman will—would have hated this. He’s always so neat.”

  “What were you going to look for?” Shipley asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Clues, files, anything to help me. But now, I have no idea what to do.”

  “We have to clean it up,” Paulette said.

  “Not yet,” I said. “How often were you here?”

  She shrugged. “Often enough, I guess. Less after Tru and Val split up.”

  “This is going to be hard,” I said, “but I’d like to know if anything important is missing.”

  Shipley nodded, his hostility to me clearly forgotten.

  “I’m going to start with the papers,” I said. “Which desk did he use most? The one upstairs?”

  “For work,” Paulette said. “He usually had that room locked. Is it open?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Do you have the combination to the safe? They didn’t get in that.”

  “I think maybe Val might,” Paulette said, and then she flushed. “I hate this.”

  Shipley rubbed his hand on his wife’s back. “Go easy, babe.”

  “I’m fine.” As if to prove her words, Paulette walked away from him, heading out the door that led into the living room.

  “My God,” she said again.

  “What’s going on?” Shipley asked me quietly.

  “Obviously something more than a gang hit,” I said.

  “If we call the police now, do you think they’ll take your theories more seriously?”

  I had a hunch it wasn’t that simple. “Let’s see what we find first.”

  “What a mess,” Paulette said from the front room. “What an awful mess.”

  “Leave the desk for me,” I said as I walked into the room. She was already standing beside it, her feet hidden by a mound of papers.

  The glint in the half-open desk drawer caught my eye again, and I walked over to it. This time, I pulled the drawer out.

  “What’s that?” Paulette asked, reaching inside.

  I held up my gloved hand, stopping her. Inside the drawer, I found medical syringes, candles, rubber tubes, and soot-blackened spoons. Behind those were specially folded sheets of paper, packets of citric acid, and a large package wrapped in brown paper.

  I grabbed the package. It was soft, which I had expected, feeling like a bag of flour. With a letter opener, I made a small slit in the middle of the package, revealing a whitish-brown powder inside.

  I scooped a bit of the powder into my gloved palm, then gingerly sniffed, careful not to get any up my nose. The powder had a bitter odor.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Shipley asked, sounding shocked.

  “Heroin,” I said. “Probably enough to make us all rich.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “WHY WOULD he have that?” Paulette asked, panic in her voice. “Why would he have that? Truman’s not like that. He wouldn’t have that stuff here.”

  I looked at the other items. The specially folded paper was used as packaging for smaller amounts. Anyone finding this stash would think that Johnson wasn’t just using; he was also dealing.

  “All the equipment’s here too.” I poured that tiny bit of powder back into the wrapper, then wiped off my gloves on the brown paper, cleaning them as best I could.

  Shipley waded through the mess toward us. “This isn’t right.”

  “Truman’s a good man, Mr. Grimshaw,” Paulette said. “He hates drugs. He volunteers at the Teen Challenge Center as much as he can. He works with the kids who’re getting clean. He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t.”

  “I know that,” I said, “but someone wants us to think he does.”

  They looked at me, shock on both of their faces.

  I waved my hand over the drawer. “It’s a plant, and an obvious one, not, I think, that anyone would care. Whoever did this wanted the drugs found.”

  “Then why didn’t they throw them on the floor?” Shipley asked.

  “Because,” Paulette said, “the next logical question is if someone found it, why didn’t they take it?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Better to leave the drawers intact here—upstairs they’ve been pulled out—so that it looks like they’ve been interrupted, and they missed the prize. Leaving the drawer conveniently open, though, so that police or anyone else coming in here would find the drugs.”

  “Why?” Paulette asked. “Why would anyone do this to Truman?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I have a guess.”

  They both looked at me again. I had apparently become trustworthy to both of them.

  “What’s your guess?” Shipley asked.

  “They wanted to leave us an explanation for that gang hit, in case anyone wondered why someone would target Truman,” I said.

  “So they did this after you asked questions?” Paulette asked.

  It was my turn to look at her. My stomach twisted. “I hope not. But I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”

  “Now what’ll we do?” Shipley asked. “We can’t call the police. They’ll jump all over this, and it’ll convince them that Truman was a bad cop.”

  “We look for more,” I said. “And then we get it out of here.”

  Shipley put his hands up as if we were in the old West and I was about to arrest him. “I’m not carrying that stuff out of this house. This is a good neighborhood, but my skin color has not changed in the last ten minutes, and if I get caught with it, I’ll never see my kid grow up.”

  “I’m not asking you to take it out of here,” I said. “Just look for it. If you find anything, call me. I don’t want you touching it.”

  “Are you going to look too?” Paulette asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. For more drugs and for other things, although I still wasn’t clear on what. “Why don’t you two start upstairs?”

  “Don’t you think we should look separately?” Paulette asked.

  I looked at her stomach. “No,” I said, “I don’t. Some of this stuff is dangerous, and the less you and your baby are exposed, the better.”

  “Why don’t you put the couch back together and just wait for us?” Shipley said.

  “Because I’m not the wait
ing kind,” Paulette snapped, sounding just like her sister.

  She pushed past her husband.

  “Upstairs?” she said to me. “The office?”

  “Bedroom first,” I said. “Sometimes they put things in closets and under mattresses. That’s the best place to plant evidence.”

  She nodded, and headed across the ruined room. Shipley started after her, but I caught his arm.

  “I know he was a relative,” I said quietly, “but I need you to be honest with me. Is Paulette right? Or is she remembering the cousin she knew before he became a cop?”

  Shipley’s pale eyes widened. “I thought you and Truman were friends.”

  “We worked together. We never socialized, and honestly, he has a tendency—had a tendency—” I was having as much trouble referring to him in the past tense as everyone else was. “He liked to bend the rules sometimes. That’s how we worked together in the first place. And I think he was willing to push things a bit farther than I ever would.”

  Although I wasn’t sure if that was true or if it just depended on the situation.

  Shipley thought for a moment. Then he glanced at the stairs, as if he didn’t want his wife to overhear us.

  “All right.” He was nearly whispering. “I’ll tell you this. Truman was a hard man. Had to be, I think, because of the job. We didn’t have a lot in common, but the girls—Paulette and Marvella—they adored him. They were constant companions when they were kids.”

  The floor creaked above us. He started.

  I nodded, trying to keep him talking.

  “It got rough with Val,” Shipley said. “He was never quite right after she left. Most guys would at least acknowledge the end of the marriage, but he told her that he made the vow before God, and he wasn’t breaking it just because she wanted to find herself. Which was not at all why she left. They weren’t suited. It was obvious to anyone who’d ever met them.”

  The floor creaked again.

  “How hard do you want me to look?” Paulette called. “Should I be pulling up floorboards?”

  “No!” Shipley yelled before I could say anything.

  “If there’s anything,” I said loudly, “it’ll be in plain sight, like this was. Half hidden, but easily found. No need to pry open secret doors.”

  “Good,” she said, and the floor creaked as she walked back to the bedroom.

  “She’s going to be the death of me,” Shipley said. “It’s our first child, and she’s acting like she’s not even pregnant. I wouldn’t be surprised if she signs up to skydive tomorrow.”

  It sounded like a line he said often, but there was real frustration in it. I understood the urge to protect. I felt it now more than ever.

  “Truman and drugs,” I said quietly.

  “Paulette’s right.” Shipley lowered his voice. “Truman hated the stuff. He found one of the other cousins smoking weed once, and gave the kid a tongue lashing like I’ve never heard. I almost thought he was going to haul off and hit the kid, but he didn’t.”

  I nodded.

  “But,” Shipley said, “I wouldn’t put it past him to have something here if he was doing a sting or something. Although that doesn’t really fit, because if he had something that dangerous in the house, he’d make sure no one could find it. It would be in his office or in his safe—”

  “The safe,” I said. “Whoever did this couldn’t get it open. Do you know the combination?”

  Shipley shook his head. “I don’t think anyone does except Truman. Maybe Val.”

  Another dead end.

  “All right, thanks.” I nodded toward the stairs. “You’d probably better help your wife before she lifts something she shouldn’t.”

  He paled, then hurried toward the stairs. I waited until he was out of my sight before I went into the kitchen.

  First, I wanted to see if the white powder on the floor really was flour. The white powder was everywhere, but the bulk of it was near the stove. I crouched, and scooped up a fingerful into my left glove, being careful not to get any residue from the heroin in this small handful. I pushed it around with the fingertip of my right glove. No visible glass. Then I looked, and saw that the texture of the granules differed. One was small and fine, a crystal, and the other was a powder.

  I sniffed, gently enough so that none of the powder got into my nostrils. Flour, sugar, and salt.

  Somehow that relieved me. I pushed my way through the mess to a pile of grocery bags. I took one out of the middle, shook it off, and carried it back into the living room.

  My black clothes were covered with white dust. I resisted the urge to wipe it off, not wanting to get any more residue on me, then opened the grocery bag and set it on the floor. I put the heroin package inside it, along with the paraphernalia, wrapped the bag up tightly, and set it near the back door leading into the garage.

  I felt as nervous as Shipley about carrying heroin, but I didn’t see any other choice. I didn’t want to flush it here, in case I spilled some and didn’t find it, and I wasn’t about to hide it on the property. Johnson was being set up as a dirty cop, and he hadn’t been.

  I hadn’t been able to prevent his death, but at least I could protect his family from this.

  Then I went back into the living room, and went through the rest of the drawers. They had been emptied out. Obviously, whoever had done this figured that no one would worry about the details.

  As far as I was concerned, the details were always the most important thing.

  I picked up the papers, finding mostly bills and bank records. The bank book had spilled open beneath several account ledgers. I looked at the ledgers first.

  Johnson, like most honest cops, had only two accounts—his savings and his checking. His savings was meager. Less than a thousand dollars. But I could tell from the bills he had listed in there that he owned the house and had about five years left on a fifteen year mortgage.

  I wondered who would get the estate. Probably Valentina, since Johnson claimed not to believe in divorce.

  I sighed and set the ledger down. Then I picked up the bank book and compared its account number to the numbers listed on the deposit and withdrawal slips nearby.

  They all matched. He didn’t appear to have another account, unless information for that was upstairs.

  I took the withdrawal slip out of my wallet and compared that number to these.

  It did not match.

  I frowned, compared again, and the numbers didn’t change. Then I went through the account balances. They didn’t match the balance written on the bottom column of the withdrawal slip.

  There was another account.

  That was information I had not wanted.

  I pushed aside the bank records, and looked at the remaining pieces of paper. Most of them were letters from family, birthday cards, and newspaper clippings about the Cubs and the Sox. I had had no idea that Johnson had been such a baseball fan.

  “Mr. Grimshaw?” Paulette called from upstairs. “I think you need to see this.”

  I set everything down, stuck the withdrawal slip back in my wallet, and climbed the stairs. My heart was pounding. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find.

  She and Shipley were standing in the entrance to Johnson’s bedroom. They had replaced the mattress on the bed, and set the chair back up. The television had been pushed to a corner, the broken glass from the screen piled against the molding.

  “What?” I asked.

  She handed me a large gold picture frame. The glass was shattered. It was a wedding picture, or what was left of it. The photograph had been ripped down the middle. All that remained of the bride was part of her veil, and her train, artfully wrapped around the groom’s shoes.

  It took me a moment to realize the groom was Johnson. He looked impossibly young. He was much thinner, although the thickness in his back, shoulders, and neck spoke of his football history. His eyes sparkled, and he had the biggest grin on his face that I had ever seen.

  In fact, I had never seen Johnson s
mile like that.

  “They’re all like this,” Paulette said.

  “What are?” I asked, still thinking about Johnson, the man I hadn’t known.

  “The pictures.” She swept a hand around the room. “Even after the divorce, he kept the pictures up in here.”

  I looked at the wall for the first time. Most of the frames hung crookedly. Many of them had shattered glass as if a fist went through them. On some, nothing else was wrong. Those were pictures of Johnson, fishing or—in one case—carrying a Christmas tree on his back like a jolly old St. Nicholas.

  Empty picture hangers tilted sideways in a few places, and below others were broken frames, obviously thrown to the floor. The pictures in those had been ripped in half. Most of them had Johnson staring at the camera alone. Two of them, though, were ripped down the middle, leaving Paulette on one side and Marvella on the other. All that remained of the person who had been between them were two brown hands, pulling the other women into a hug.

  “The pictures that are missing,” I said, “are they of Valentina?”

  “Every one of them,” Shipley said.

  I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I saw no choice. “Are you sure Truman didn’t do this himself, maybe after the divorce?”

  “No,” Paulette said. “I’ve been here a lot since then. He never touched them. He loved her, Mr. Grimshaw.”

  I took a deep breath. I had one more question to ask, and they weren’t going to like it.

  “This is important,” I said, “and I need you to consider it. Marvella said he was crazy when it came to Valentina. You said something similar.”

  Shipley threaded an arm through Paulette’s, almost as if he knew what I was going to ask.

  I treaded gently. “You both know what happened to her on Sunday, right?”

  Shipley nodded. “Marvella’s been keeping us up-to-date.”

  “We know about the abortion, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Paulette said.

  “And the rape?” I asked.

  “I guessed as much,” Shipley said.

  “Yes,” Paulette said at the same time.

  I swallowed hard. Here was the question I didn’t want to ask. “Is it possible that what Valentina called a rape was something that happened between her and Truman, something he might not consider to be a rape?”