Felonious Jazz

by Bryan Gilmer

  She hummed a few notes, but Jeff only caught a few of them over the erratic phone connection. “That melody will always be stuck in my head.”

  Then a pause. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me it was your apartment.”

  * * *

  First, Leonard had to scoot from the farmhouse.

  He drove the little Civic back to Raleigh and got there well before noon.

  He was risking everything he was and had for this album, including his recent contented life in that little doomed farmhouse. Through the whole project, he had wondered how he would feel when he got to this point, when he would leave this place. He decided he felt perfectly true to himself about it. The album was brilliant so far; he loved every note of it, and it wasn’t yet finished. He had to finish it. That was what artists did, poured themselves into their art without worrying about the consequences. He would move on to a mansion after the album was done, as long as he didn’t get arrested.

  Leonard stopped at a U-Haul store, which was also a Texaco gas station, and rented a 14-foot panel truck. He bought a load of cardboard boxes and rolls of packing tape. He made the freaking storekeeper’s day. This time, he wouldn’t need a furniture dolly. His arms and legs were still sore from moving everything by himself, but that was nothing compared to the wounds from the last 12 hours.

  He took the truck back to the farmhouse and spent the rest of the morning packing his things, loading the boxes onto the truck one at a time.

  He panicked mid-morning, worrying he had waited too long to make this move and that the fancy legal investigator and nineteen cop cars would roll into the yard at any minute. How many security cameras had captured his photo?

  After he rolled closed the door of the U-Haul and locked it, he checked inside the farmhouse one last time. He looked at what he’d left and tried to see it through the eyes of J. Davis Swaine, legal investigator, imagined him finding it.

  He decided to paint the title to the album’s final track on the gray, glossy tongue-and-groove boards of the house’s comfortable old front porch:

  LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ME

  Leonard drove the rental truck to the shopping center parking lot where he had stashed the Nissan Pathfinder in plain sight. It was still here. He used the key remote from his pocket to unlock it, then opened the rear hatch. He pulled out two magnetic signs: Two big diamonds that said “Raleigh Alarm Security.” He’d peeled them off a wrecked van at the junkyard. He stuck one onto each of the Pathfinder’s rear doors without anyone noticing – or at least, if anyone did notice, no one seemed to care.

  * * *

  The creeper came into the stinky little room late in the morning and stared again at the diaper sticking out of EmmaJane’s jeans – not at her face or her boobs like when he had first grabbed her. Her little plan seemed like it was working.

  “Get the kid and the stuff you’ll need for the next day or two,” the creeper said. “We’re going somewhere else.”

  The next day or two. EmmaJane felt like someone had dropped ice cubes down her back. She put two cans of formula, several bottles of water and a few cups of stew into her hoodie and tied the arms together to make a bag. She looked at the creeper’s feet and said, “You need to carry the rest of the diapers, or we’ll have a mess.”

  And she couldn’t believe it, but the guy just bent down and picked up the diapers, just did like she said. EmmaJane put Dylin on her left hip, slung the bundle of supplies over her right shoulder and followed the creeper out of the room and out the front door.

  It was overwhelmingly fantastic to be outdoors, and suddenly she realized she could run. Just then, the creeper pointed his little pistol at them, and she felt like crying.

  He loaded them into some kind of SUV thing, and she was concerned about Dylin riding in it without a baby seat. She sat in the back seat, on the right, and set the bundle of supplies on the seat to the left of her. When the creeper sat the handgun on the seat between his legs, she switched Dylin to her right knee and stuck her left hand into her pocket, pushing her index finger through the pull ring of a beef stew lid.

  Fifty-two

  Just a few minutes after the Pathfinder turned onto Rocky Falls Boulevard, EmmaJane saw a bunch of police cars heading the other direction, and the creeper sighed and told her “We were just in time, sweetheart. They almost caught us.”

  Why hadn’t they gotten there four minutes sooner?

  The creeper was smart, EmmaJane had to admit. He had left just in time, somehow. And he had turned on the child locks in the back seat of the car, so she couldn’t open the door and jump out with the baby at a stop sign. In fact, he laughed when she tried the door handle.

  When the car was moving, she knew that attacking the creeper would make them wreck, and Dylin would get hurt, maybe her too. She wasn’t quite sure she could hurt the man enough with the sharp lid to get away, and, like, now she didn’t even want to try it.

  And as soon as the car pulled into a neighborhood, he took Dylin in the front seat with him.

  “I will snap this baby’s neck if you do anything cute,” he said. “So you just follow me into the house.”

  EmmaJane didn’t recognize this neighborhood. It was a lot like the one she lived in, but with townhouses. Judging by the short distances the creeper had driven her, it couldn’t be far away from her house. Still in Rocky Falls, for sure. She was trying to decide whether she should run and when, but the creeper pressed a button on a big, honkin’ remote control, which opened the garage door, and then drove the car inside this townhouse’s garage.

  Then he put the door down behind them, got out and opened her car door.

  It was a townhouse with no furniture that seemed brand new, like nobody had ever lived here. But for some reason, there were a bunch of big jugs of Purell lying on the floor right inside the door. The creeper led EmmaJane into a downstairs restroom with no windows, handed the baby back to her and told her, “His name is Jacob. He’s not my son.”

  Duh, EmmaJane thought. The creeper threw the bundle of supplies into the bathtub behind her with a clunk.

  Then he shut the door, not slamming it, just pulling it gently until it clicked. A whining noise repeated over and over. He was using a cordless drill to screw the door shut. She and Dylin were trapped again.

  * * *

  As the Beechcraft landed at RDU, Jeff was thinking about how to get a line on Noblac, trying to think whether there was any predicting what “song” a flipped-out jazz musician would perform on them next.

  Sarah’d said she didn’t know where Leonard was living. He had refused to tell her. He could be renting a place under some sort of alias.

  The plane taxied to the private terminal, and Jeff and Caroline climbed out.

  “I guess we have to rent a car,” Jeff said.

  “Someone’s picking me up.” She ducked underneath the strap of her overnight bag.

  “Can we please talk later?”

  Caroline shrugged, turned, and walked the short distance through the terminal to the sidewalk.

  Jeff ran a hand across the top of his head and decided to let her go for now. Either she would calm down, or she wouldn’t. There was a little car counter. He stopped by and got a rental in the works.

  Next he went into a pilots lounge with a computer for checking weather reports and e-mail. Jeff used it to sign onto the website for the skip-trace service CB Allison subscribed to. It was a database compiled from mostly private records, such as data filed to the three major credit reporting agencies, and he was willing to bet Cooperton’s guys either didn’t have a subscription or hadn’t thought to try it. He ran a trace on Leonard Noblac, sipping burnt-tasting complimentary coffee as he punched the search parameters.

  The first result was bingo. The electronic dossier, a compilation of information from dozens of public records databases and several private ones, started with a history of all known addresses for the suspect. The Philly address matched Mrs. Noblac’s house, and there was an Upsal address from
the ‘70s. A North Raleigh address showed that “associated persons,” Sarah Rosen and Jacob Noblac had shared the address until a few months ago.

  And there was a current address on Rocky Falls Boulevard, updated to the credit bureau just a week before, in the northern reaches of Rocky Falls. Jeff snatched up the phone and called Cooperton. “I got the address.”

  “All right.” Cooperton sounded edgy. He scribbled. “You back home?”

  “I’m at the airport, and I’m about to rent a car.”

  “I’ll send a few uniforms out there to keep an eye on it while we gather up the SWAT team. Meet me behind the Kroger on Rocky Falls Boulevard up the road from his house in half an hour.” Jeff grabbed his rental car folder and key and jogged toward the parking lot.

  Fifty-three

  Leonard Noblac rented a motel room just to have a private place to get ready for the show.

  He was having a big lunch. He sat at the foot of the too-firm bed and popped the lid of a Styrofoam container. He stared at a 16-ounce T-bone steak, so rare that it was barely warm. He fixed up his baked potato with butter and sour cream, a little black pepper and lots of salt. He swallowed five more ibuprofen tablets and poured the rest of the last bottle of the H-B into the plastic cup from the bathroom and started to eat.

  The game show on TV ended, and the news theme music played. They led with a helicopter shot of his farmhouse surrounded by cop cars.

  “New today at noon: Wake County deputies have surrounded a North Raleigh farmhouse, and now we understand the SWAT team is ready to storm it,” a grandfatherly anchor said. “This may be related to the terrifying string of bizarre burglaries and killings recently in the Rocky Falls community. Also at this hour: Another murder, possibly related: a young woman found strangled this morning in her Rocky Falls home. We’re live on both scenes with team coverage.”

  Leonard dropped the forkful of meat. He grinned and grabbed the remote to change the channel. “… been here all morning, at this white house you see behind me, David, but so far they aren’t telling us why. Armed officers are making us wait here, a good distance away, and we hear that they may be preparing to storm the house ...”

  Leonard flipped to the third station, the CBS affiliate, the most respected news operation in the Triangle. They were rolling the videotape of a report that said nothing that Leonard hadn’t already heard on the other stations. Afterward, the anchor asked the reporter, “Do police think this house could be somehow linked with the recent string of burglaries in the Rocky Falls community?”

  The answer, “Patricia, that’s an excellent question, and one we’re all asking, but one police just aren’t willing to answer right now. We’ll stay on the scene all day and have more this evening at 6.”

  “Thank you –”

  Leonard wanted to shout, “Plug the album, man!”

  Pride filled his belly like a meal he’d been hungry for all his life.

  He flipped back to the other channels in time to hear both reports ending. He leapt to his feet and cheered that his name hadn’t been mentioned, that no composite sketch of his face had been broadcast. His show today was extremely important, and with any luck, he’d have just enough time to play it before they got too close.

  Leonard had his laptop plugged into the room’s Ethernet cable. He’d been uploading some final updates to the album.

  And now, even though the newspaper reporter had never written him back, he signed onto America Online and composed a note to her: “Dear Ms. Kramden: I’m playing a show this afternoon. You should come. You’ll know it when you see it. Here is a link to my new album, which I’ve just released for free online. I think you will find it very interesting.” He hit send.

  He turned off the computer, snapped it shut and left it on the motel room’s little table, stood up, and left.

  Fifty-four

  Jeff found the SWAT team members sweating under a high afternoon sun as they staged behind the grocery store.

  They had a converted half-length school bus, painted blue, which contained the SWAT guys’ gear. Team members arrived one by one, eyes screaming with adrenaline. In the cloud of diesel exhaust from their bus, they strapped on body armor, radio headsets, goggles and helmets. Each man took and checked a fully automatic machine gun pistol with a foldable stock: a Heckler and Koch MP-5.

  Jeff realized the bus was armored with plate steel.

  “Our sniper says there’s been no movement in the house since he set up on it more than two hours ago,” the SWAT commander told Cooperton. “Noblac’s car’s there, a ratty old Brady Bunch station wagon. No house lights on. Suspect might be there, but if he is, he’s probably asleep. We should probably move soon.”

  When the warrant arrived, the SWAT team huddled for some instructions Jeff couldn’t hear. Then they boarded their bus.

  “What about us?” Jeff asked Cooperton.

  Cooperton walked toward the Crown Victoria, pulled his walkie talkie from his belt, turned up the volume, and handed it to Jeff. “Get in. Listen and pray. Get ready to go in there with me when they say, ‘Clear.’”

  Jeff sidled into the passenger seat and realized with sudden alarm that he’d left his briefcase and the Glock in the rented Toyota. Cooperton might not want him armed, anyway.

  “Hey, L-T, should I have brought my Glock?”

  “You mean you didn’t?”

  “I’m not used to having it yet.”

  Cooperton just shook his head solemnly. “Glovebox. You can borrow my throwdown. Anyhow, keep it in your pocket if you can.”

  “Your throwdown?” Jeff unlatched the compartment and found a little silver .38 with fake mother-of-pearl grips on top of the Crown’s owner’s manual. He turned over the pistol, cool against his fingertips. The gun was the unreliable, shiny brand the woman at Protection Armaments had first showed him.

  “Yeah. In case of a police emergency, it’s the gun you throw down.” Cooperton retrieved a Coke bottle that was waiting in the cup holder and spat. “I think that one shoots. The drunk I got it off of had just popped off a couple rounds in his back yard before I took it away. See how many rounds are in there.”

  “What’s a police emergency?”

  “Like in case you shoot a guy in self defense and he doesn’t have a gun, after all.”

  Jeff felt as if he’d taken another bite of the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The world’s institutions worked a lot more messily than anyone wanted to believe, and the firm’s deal with Cooperton was recorded in the same shady section of the moral ledger. So was Jeff’s romantic life.

  Yet if all went as planned, they were about to stop a crazy guy who was violating the sanctity of people’s homes and murdering them and their pets.

  Jeff checked the pistol’s magazine and counted eight rounds. He slapped it back into the handle and chambered one with a click. Someone on the radio said, “Keep this channel clear. The bus is going in. As soon as it stops, send Perkins and Jeffries around back. Everybody else wait a ten-count and take the front door.”

  * * *

  “Empty. Nobody here. All units stand down.”

  When Cooperton heard the words over the radio, he gassed the Crown Victoria and the car lurched into the yard of the rundown farmhouse, making Jeff grab the door handle to steady himself.

  He and Jeff both piled out of the car and jogged to the front porch, where two SWAT guys were sitting on the steps. Someone had painted the words “LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ME” on the tongue-and-groove floorboards behind them in black spray paint. It smelled like the paint could be fresh, and a couple of the letters were smudged as if someone had walked across them while they were wet.

  “Nothing, L-T,” one of the cops told Cooperton. “All the furniture’s gone. It looks like he just moved out. There’s packaging from moving supplies lying in the kitchen. Power’s still on.”

  “Do me a favor, son,” Cooperton replied. “Go check the mailbox. Maybe we can tell how many days’ worth has come since he le
ft.”

  The guy walked to the road and hollered back, “Ain’t no mail in here.”

  “Might’ve just missed him.” Cooperton keyed his radio and ordered everyone out of the house. Then he switched channels and called for his forensics team.

  A young deputy in SWAT gear came out the front door and grabbed the lieutenant’s arm. “There’s a plastic what-you-call – instrument case – in one of the bedrooms, in the middle of the floor. It’s the only thing in the room. I’m worried it might be a bomb.”

  Cooperton covered his whole face with his hand. “I guess we’re gonna play with all our toys today, then. Call out the bomb squad.”

  As the guy described the case, Jeff realized it sounded like the one for Margaret’s violin. “Y’all can’t blow that up just to see whether it’s a bomb like you usually do,” he cautioned Cooperton. “That’s a half-million dollar violin.”

  * * *

  “My day keeps getting worse,” Cooperton said, spitting with special force when a cell phone call notified him that there’d been an apparent homicide, a strangulation by ligature at Laurel Lake Apartments, just outside his own patrol district.

  “Any graffiti?” he asked the patrol sergeant on the other end of the phone. After a couple of seconds, Cooperton added, “Then y’all just work it like always and call me if somethin’ weird comes up.”

  It was 1:19 p.m. when the bomb squad arrived at the farmhouse. The squad had its own panel truck full of gear. It turned out that two of the guys from the SWAT team were also on the bomb squad – though not its commander, who took his time arriving.

  Once that guy had been briefed, he decided to use the bomb retrieval robot, a remote-control vehicle the size of a toy dump truck that ran on miniature tank treads. Two men set it inside the front door, then hurried away from the house.