Felonious Jazz

by Bryan Gilmer

  * * *

  Jeff drove the Marquis de Savigny to Margaret’s new hotel in downtown Raleigh, and when he knocked on the door of her room, her boyfriend from Cincinnati answered it.

  “This is Jeff,” Margaret said. “My old buddy from college.” And the boyfriend regarded Jeff with suspicion, especially after the long, emotionally freighted hug that he and Margaret exchanged.

  She thanked Jeff for retrieving the violin and put it into a brand new case, and Jeff gave all the credit for getting it back to EmmaJane, whom Margaret said she would have to be sure and meet someday. Jeff said he was sorry about what had happened to Margaret, and she said what could you do about wackos – at least she was safe now.

  And as Jeff stood to leave the room, she squeezed his hand and told him, “Thank you for being such a great friend.”

  * * *

  Two weeks before the pet killings, Leonard had stolen the credit card bills from the truck that drove mail from RDU to the local Raleigh post office, the Sheriff’s Office concluded. In the middle of the night, the driver always stopped at the same diner for coffee, and Leonard had apparently gotten inside the trailer and stolen the big burlap bags on three separate nights.

  * * *

  EmmaJane’s parents had gone to the Sheriff’s Office about her disappearance, and because there was no evidence of a crime, they’d put her down as a likely runaway, never thinking she was connected to the Rocky Falls burglaries.

  After being reunited with her parents, EmmaJane went into counseling for post-traumatic stress, and the woman was actually kind of cool. Plus her life was better after that, because her parents paid attention to her again. When they asked how she was doing, they really wanted to hear her answer.

  * * *

  Now Sarah Rosen remembered introducing Mickey Reuss’ new wife to her husband a few months earlier when he was on the lookout for new piano tuning clients. And New Wife remembered making small talk during the tuning appointment about how her husband had spent more than ten grand to cure the dog of cancer. In fact, she’d told Leonard, they had taken the dog to the same vet who had cured the cat two doors down. Indian lady at the pet hospital out on Rocky Falls Boulevard. It was amazing what science could do these days.

  And Leonard had told her, “You know, I should write a song about that.”

  Fifty-eight

  EmmaJane had told the police what Leonard had said about the album and about friending her. When she’d signed onto her account at the police station and accepted the Myspace friend request, they’d all gained access to Noblac’s page, where he had posted tracks that matched the titles in the libretto that Jeff and the deputies had found in the farmhouse refrigerator, plus the demented explanation for the “album.” The last track, added the afternoon of his death, was called, “Liberty and Justice For Me,” with the note: “If my wife and her adulterous lover are going to wreck my life, I can’t let them do it halfway. They have to WRECK MY LIFE.”

  A notation said, “Download now – major promotional effort underway will make this highly collectible.”

  In real life, Leonard Noblac may not have had a single friend, but online, he had 1,200, and hundreds of them had already downloaded every track on the album and passed it along to their own friends who had sent it along to theirs. There were thousands of messages complimenting Leonard on “Felonious Jazz,” the project that inspired his crime spree, including praise from jazz scholars at famous universities.

  Myspace took Leonard’s page down right away, but the damn album was on the Internet now, reproducing in the wild. And when the media realized the burglaries and the music were connected, they played the songs on the air, and more sick minds around the world began to copy and share the music. It was achieving the cult status of Charles Manson’s drawings. Leonard had been right to post at the top of the page, “This is the project that will make me a famous jazzman.”

  * * *

  So Jeff had become the executioner of a jazz antichrist. Of what Noblac had posted on the page, what most troubled Jeff was how right he thought the disturbed man was about suburban sprawl, meaningless existences, shallow social connections, demeaning jobs.

  But it wasn’t like being trapped in poverty, Jeff finally decided. People in the suburbs had choices, and if living a comfortable, bland, safe existence was all they wanted from their historically unprecedented freedom as Americans, they were entitled to that without a Leonard Noblac bursting in and fucking it up for his own reasons.

  Leonard Noblac had had a choice, too, Jeff knew. He could have taken his divorce settlement and moved wherever he wanted and lived the kind of life he wanted. But he was too crazy or crazed to do that.

  Instead, he’d stubbed out his life on the mechanically reproduced landscape of Rocky Falls.

  Jeff took two weeks off from work. He spent the first few days trying to work through the tangle of negative emotions on his own while getting the loft ready to live in. Cooperton offered to return the Glock, but Jeff asked him to hold onto it. Jeff wasn’t going to do anything. But still. He also decided not to drink for a couple of weeks.

  And four days into his time off, the morning after the third time he found himself yelling in the middle of his loft to vent the toxic emotions balling into something like a tumor at the back of his throat, he found the number for a counseling center, called and explained his situation and got an appointment before lunch the same day.

  The therapist was a woman about 15 years older than him named Riley who reminded him how his mom had looked when he was 10. She gave him a seat in the middle of a comfortable blue sofa in her dim office, sat in an office chair and faced him holding a yellow notepad. It took most of the 50-minute session for him to tell her the whole story that had led to the shooting. She listened carefully, making a few empathetic noises and extensive notes.

  “My God, what you’ve been through!” she said when he finished, and he knew she’d been listening to him, deeply. That felt good. She was looking right into his eyes now. “What’s bothering you the most?”

  “Why would a guy do all of that? It doesn’t make any sense. I want you to tell me exactly what was wrong with him.”

  Riley pushed her shoulders toward her ears. “I don’t know, of course, but it sounds like pretty classic narcissistic personality disorder slash antisocial personality disorder. Patterns of thinking that gave him a lust for fame, a disregard of other people in favor of himself. But who knows.”

  Jeff shot back: “And how does a guy with serious problems like that live a normal life for decades and then one day start killing dogs and kidnapping teenagers?” He checked his tone; he was behaving as if he were angry at Riley over it.

  Riley cocked her head to one side, intrigued, not taking it personally at all. “Psychologists might say he ‘decompensated.’ Lots of people live decades with serious mental health issues by creating coping structures that keep the problem in check just enough to get by. Some of those habits are positive, like exercising to burn stress. Lots are destructive, like alcoholism. But if you put enough weight on those psychological braces, sooner or later, they break.”

  She shifted position in the chair again as he thought about that. “But I’m asking how you’ve been feeling since the shooting, Jeff.”

  Jeff blinked twice. “I’ve been wondering how in the hell does the guy get the idea that I’m the father of his wife’s baby? Sarah is just my boss. I can’t imagine that she slept with anyone else, either.”

  One corner of Riley’s lip turned upward. “Well, surveys show about half of all men have at least fleeting doubts that they’re really the father of their newborn. But 98 percent really are. It’s poor self-esteem, men not believing they’re worthy to help create new life. This might explain why he didn’t actually kill the baby. Because on some level, he knew …”

  Jeff was failing to hold the train of what she was saying. He kept thinking about Leonard, marveling that as near as anyone could tell, the guy had committed the elaborate serie
s of crimes by himself, through meticulous planning and the use of tools. Using handtrucks to move heavy pieces of furniture. Parking his ingeniously stolen vehicles inside garages so that he’d have plenty of time to load stuff undetected. Identifying gaping security weaknesses and exploiting them.

  Now he noticed Riley had stopped talking again. She was looking at him. He met her eyes, and only then did she resume speaking.

  “Jeff, that’s my best-guess explanation for Leonard’s suspicion of you, but the bigger point is, again you’re telling me what you’ve been thinking since the shooting. What have you been feeling?”

  “Pissed off.”

  “At who?”

  “At Leonard Noblac.”

  And Riley stared at him in the most curious way. “You must be kidding.”

  “No, I’m not kidding.”

  “Pissed off at him? Really? You seem absolutely fascinated with him. Honestly, you seem a little in awe of him.”

  And in that startled moment, Jeff realized two things: A part of him did admire the man he’d killed. And the reason he was angry was that the guy had been completely in control of the whole string of burglaries, and he’d led Jeff down a breadcrumb path like a chump. If Leonard hadn’t wanted it, Jeff doubted he would ever have found him.

  “I’m pissed off because he set me up to shoot him, set me up to look like a hero, be called a hero, when I know it’s not true. He made me his tool. It all ended exactly how he wanted – exactly the way he wanted, and he loaded me down with a horrible experience of killing a man.”

  “But according to the news, you solved the mystery. You tracked him down. You stopped him.”

  “No. He was in control. I just walked along at the right moment. I just played the part he scripted for me. That’s what I always seem to do, drift along until something happens to me. Or I just do what I think someone else expects.”

  And Jeff thought of drifting so long with Ashlyn. He realized how he blamed himself for failing to find a way to stay with Margaret after college. He’d let the last woman he was sure he loved float away because of – because of logistics.

  “Well,” Riley said, beaming. “That’s interesting.”

  He looked at her. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. We’re learning a lot about you here. You admire Leonard Noblac because no matter how antisocial and destructive, he seized control of his life. You feel you’re too passive. Leonard Noblac, over the last few weeks at least, is the least passive person I can imagine. And on some level, you envy that.”

  Jeff was shaking his head no, and then he stopped. He nodded instead. “Maybe that’s true. But what I was thinking before you said that is, if I’m not careful, I could snap like that one day myself.

  “That frightens you.”

  Jeff nodded. “What do you think was the last thing that pushed him to that point?”

  Instead of answering, Riley softly said, “I think that’s a real breakthrough you’ve just made, Jeff,” compassion thick in her voice. “But that’s enough of analyzing of that guy. We might talk about him some more, but only as it relates to helping you. We’re going to spend our sessions together talking about you.”

  LATE MONDAY

  Fifty-nine

  Leonard Noblac turned around too quickly in the narrow aisle, and he knocked five bottles of pills off the shallow shelves with a crash like a handful of baby rattles. The alarm – this one an old-fashioned boxing bell – hammered away, hurting his ears. Yet he bet he easily had five minutes before the first deputy arrived.

  He scanned the alphabetized labels behind the pharmacy counter until he found the Cipro. Pharmacists locked up the narcotics in a safe overnight, and that was okay, because he still had some Vicodin he’d stolen from the vet for the pain. But they didn’t bother to secure this great drug, the antibiotic that could kill just about anything that infected you.

  The wounds under his arm complained louder every minute, but still Leonard had driven the U-Haul truck hundreds of miles, waiting for nightfall, before stopping here to treat the infection. The closed Walgreen’s stood not far off the interstate in a strip shopping center. Leonard pocketed two brown bottles of the 750 mg capsules and then felt his way to the small storeroom in the back.

  He’d thrown a brick through the glass front door from the parking lot. The cops would definitely come in that way. So he left through the metal back door, which opened onto a paved area where the store received deliveries. He closed the door carefully, took 15 steps, ducked between some hedges and was behind the U-Haul, parked across five spaces in a McDonald’s parking lot. The truck nicely shielded the back door of the pharmacy from people inside.

  He opened the truck’s passenger door, climbed in and slid across the bench seat, opened the driver’s door and stepped down to the ground. Inside, he bought a Big Mac combo – super sized – and swallowed one of the antibiotic pills with a mouthful of Diet Coke.

  He’d eaten half his sandwich before the deputy cars streamed into the pharmacy parking lot. Fast food; slow cops. The night shift was usually staffed thinly, and some deputies didn’t hurry because they didn’t honestly want to face down an intruder inside a dark store.

  Leonard wondered how long it would take Wake County deputies to agree with Noah Jakes’ wife that the pediatrician was missing, not at a strip club or taking in a movie or away on vacation somewhere with a mistress.

  Jakes had been almost exactly Leonard’s age and looked superficially like the clean-shaven version of Leonard wearing the zero uniform. The doc’s office was just down Rocky Falls Boulevard from the townhouses that had burned. Leonard staged the finale there just to be near Jakes, a complete zero who had humiliated Leonard over dinner months before by joking that no one made a decent living playing jazz.

  Careful who you insult, Leonard thought, smiled and bit a fry in half.

  Leonard had called Jakes at his office, pretending to be frantic. He said he’d stolen Jacob and brought him to the empty townhouse. Then he told Jakes a series of lies: He regretted kidnapping the child, who had Type I diabetes because his pancreas didn’t produce insulin. Jacob was past due for an insulin injection and was acting very sick. He felt bad now for snatching Jacob. He cried and told Jakes he knew if he tried to get insulin, the police would find him and arrest him.

  And Jakes, with that ego of his, had suggested coming to the townhouse to give the baby his shot. Then Jakes would take the child and see that he got back to Sarah. Leonard could leave. Jakes wouldn’t look. He wouldn’t call anyone. He’d just take care of the baby.

  “Give me a few minutes,” Jakes had said. “I don’t keep any infant insulin here. I’ll have to make a dilution. Don’t hurt him. I’ll be there soon.”

  And Leonard said, “Don’t stall to call the cops. If you aren’t here in exactly five minutes, he’s dead.”

  Jakes had arrived seconds after the babysitter left. Leonard made him wait downstairs for a minute, yelling that he had to make a quick call. When TSB and her buddy answered, he gave them the address, then called the doc upstairs. Saying he was making a show of good faith, Leonard tossed the .380 down to the landing when he handed the zero the baby. The doc was messing with a syringe and two little bottles when the front door banged open.

  Leonard stepped inside a closet where he had a hole cut through the wall into the next unit’s stairwell. From the sidewalk outside, he heard the single shot.

  Presto-change-o: And Justice For Me. Leonard had composed alternate endings in case something went wrong, but he’d seen on TV that it had played out ideally. Zeros were so predictable.

  Leonard was a genius, so Leonard got to live.

  Maybe they would yet figure it out. But when a community’s string of crimes appeared to be solved; when there was a young, good-looking investigator to celebrate as a hero, no one asked too many questions. Besides, the simplest solution was usually the correct one. Usually.

  Leonard wadded the rest of the terrible sandwich in its paper and left the tray sittin
g there on the table. He took the soda. A deputy was pushing into the restaurant now, and Leonard waved to get the guy’s attention: “Hey, officer, I think there’s some kind of burglar alarm going off over there at the drugstore.”

  “Uh, yeah,” the young cop said, irritated. “Why do you think I’m here? Did you see anything?”

  “No,” Leonard said, acting chastened. “I was in the bathroom taking my antibiotic, and when I came back out here, that bell was ringing.”

  The cop pushed past Leonard and strode toward a woman sitting at a booth ignoring the bell.

  Leonard took a pull of Diet Coke and ambled into the parking lot. He climbed behind the wheel of the rental truck and turned the key. He had to find a new place to live. He wasn’t sure now that he was tired of the suburbs.

  As the truck’s wheels rolled, he hummed to himself.

  He was getting a new idea for a jazz tune.

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bryan Gilmer has made his living as a writer for more than 15 years, working first as a night-shift crime reporter in Greenville, South Carolina, before moving on to Florida’s largest newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times. Now he teaches newswriting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and writes for institutional and corporate clients in addition to his fiction. He lives with his wife, Kelly, and their son, Quinn, in Durham, North Carolina.

  E-mail him at bryan@bryangilmer.com, or visit his website at BryanGilmer.com.

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