by Tina Whittle
The sidewalks were more crowded than usual this Monday, both tourists and locals coming out for a lunchtime breath of spring. The wind off the brackish water smelled like mud and vegetation, and it mingled with cigarette smoke and fried shrimp and stale beer. A Russian freighter cruised by, looking like a condominium complex out for a stroll, the Talmadge Bridge gleaming behind it.
I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder, couldn’t help examining the faces of every person I passed on the sidewalk. The couple lifting up their trifocals to read a menu, the busker playing eighties sitcom themes on his trumpet, the SCAD students sketching the brick and ballast stone architecture. The usual tapestry. Not a stalker or sniper or no-good-nik among them.
Tai Randolph, I told myself, you’re getting paranoid. But it was with sweet relief that I finally pushed open the door to Soul Ink Tattoos.
“Hey, Train,” I called. “You here?”
I heard a familiar voice from the back. “Be with you in a second.”
For ten years, Soul Ink had resided in this same spot on the west end, the funkier section of the waterfront. Its decor was a cross between Episcopalian chapel and post-modern brothel, with dazzling stained glass windows, a golden stamped concrete floor, and squeaky red leather chairs.
Train stepped through the beaded curtain that separated his work space from the private back room. “Tai!”
He was a well-muscled guy, with chestnut hair and a penchant for tight sleeveless tee shirts, the better to show off his intricately inked forearms and biceps, a garden of roses and Celtic crosswork intertwined with Bible verses. He was older than me, but his face read young—full round cheeks above a goatee flecked with silver.
Train took the name of his shop literally. He saw creating body art as a sacred ministry and considered tattoos as prayerful as rosary beads. He was also one of the few people in town willing to provide a job—either at his shop or through his church—for those with tarnished reputations and/or rap sheets, the Lowcountry’s second and third-chancers.
“You here to get a new tat?” he said.
“I wish. Unfortunately, I’m looking for John Wilde. Heard he was working here.”
“He was, but I haven’t seen him since Friday.” Train gave me his pastor look. “Why? What’s happened?”
“He’s disappeared.”
“Uh oh. He’s not in trouble with the law, is he?”
“I don’t know what kind of trouble he’s in, but I suspect it’s bad.”
I sat on one of those red leather couches and filled him in, everything from the new lawyer to the lawsuit to Hope’s visit. I left out the part about trying to see Jasper. Train wouldn’t have approved of that either.
“What concerns me most,” I said, “is that John told Hope he was gonna take care of some things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Stalker things. Old debt things. All kinds of powder-keg things. He didn’t try to see Jasper, did he?”
“Not that I know of. Steered clear of that whole business.” Train rubbed his chin. “He called me Friday morning, said he’d dropped his bike off at a friend’s shop to have an oil leak fixed, asked for a ride back. I drove over to the Whitemarsh Walmart and got him.”
“What shop?”
Train held his hands up in a “dunno” gesture. “He worked the rest of the day, and I gave him a ride home. That’s the last time I saw him. He was supposed to open Saturday morning, but he called in last minute and said he needed the day off. Personal business. I didn’t ask why.”
I remembered the receipt for the ammunition. Saturday morning.
“Does he skip work a lot?”
“No.” Train leveled a look my way. “I know you two had history, and that he has sins aplenty on his tally. But he’s trying. Ever since Hope went to jail, he’s cleaned his life up. He said they’d both made bad mistakes—”
And Hope’s still making them, I thought.
“—but I’ll tell you, that mess back in the fall shook him up royally. He is on the straight and narrow now.”
“And Hope?”
He shrugged. “She has declined my visits. Has anybody told her he’s missing?”
And then I realized—Train didn’t know she wasn’t in jail anymore.
“She’s out. Early release contingent on her testimony in Jasper’s upcoming trial.”
“Oh. John didn’t mention that.”
“I think he was trying to keep it on the QT. But now she’s disappeared too, and I suspect they’ve both gotten in over their heads, again.”
Train stroked his chin, thoughtful, his dark eyes filling with concern. Not panic. He’d witnessed many recently released cons return to problematic habits, hang with bad crowds, tumble off the wagon. This was familiar ground to him. As I was weighing my options, though, he delivered a question that was a bolt from the blue.
“You don’t think he’s playing vigilante, do you?”
“What?”
“I mean, you said he said he was going to take care of things. One of the things that bugged him most was Hope getting as much time as she did. He said it was a raw deal, said it was all the fault of your Uncle Boone and company.”
I felt the ground I’d been standing on shift a bit. I hadn’t considered that John might be off on a solo revenge mission. What if that was what he’d been doing out Whitemarsh way? Not dropping off his bike. Dropping in on Boone, whose estate lay right off Highway 80, barely a mile from the Walmart.
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. He’s not—”
“What, stubborn? Convinced he can handle things on his own?” Train’s eyes were firm and gentle. “Don’t even pretend you’re not the same way. Isn’t that why you’re here, after all? Because the law isn’t doing what you think needs to be done?”
I wasn’t about to argue with him about my motives. But he’d certainly put a new wrinkle on things.
“Are you sure John’s disappeared?” he said. “Has anybody actually checked the trailer to see if he’s there?”
That startled me. It would be exactly like John to go to ground if necessary. Not without telling Hope—that was weird—but still…
“I don’t think so.”
“Then here. Take his spare key.” Train pulled a cheap penny-colored house key from the register. “He left it with me in case something happened.”
“Something like what?”
“He didn’t say. I thought he meant the usual things that sometimes happen. But now you’ve got me worried.” He handed it to me, then wrote an address on the back of a business card. “Number 207 in the Shady Grove Mobile Home Community. Let me know what you find.”
I slid it into my back pocket. “I will.”
“And if it’s something suspicious—”
“Right to the authorities. I promise.”
“And Tai?”
“Yeah?”
His eyes were solemn, his face composed. “May I pray for you?”
I was hesitant—it had been a long time since anyone had interceded with the Man Upstairs on my behalf—but this was Train’s MO, and it was as sincere an offering as any artwork he etched upon skin. I swallowed my discomfort and nodded. He took my hands in his and clasped them together.
He closed his eyes. “Dear Lord, watch over Your daughter, Tai. She’s a handful, I know, but You have innumerable miracles in Your pocket. Keep her safe and on the path of righteousness, and bless her seeking, bless her thirst for truth and justice and use it for Your purposes. Amen.”
He opened his eyes, but didn’t let go of my hands. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever set one foot on the path of righteousness, and truth and I were barely speaking some days, but justice? That was as worthy a goal as any, even if chasing it was like chasing a rainbow.
I squeezed his fingers. “Amen.”
Chapter Twenty-one
&nbs
p; Shady Grove proved to be several trees short of a grove, and the only shade it provided came courtesy of the sheet metal parking structures in almost every driveway. It wasn’t particularly shady in a criminal way either, despite what I knew of Hope and John’s known associates. There were mostly doublewides, a few singlewides, all of them older models but well-maintained. Some sported flower beds around the borders, fake deer and geese posed artistically next to birdbaths.
It took me a while to find number 207, John and Hope not being the kind of people to put out a mailbox with their names on it, but I finally found what had to be their place, a good half mile from where my phone’s GPS put the address. They’d chosen a lot set back from the main stretch, close to the woods, private.
The mobile home itself was tubular and bare, like the fuselage of a jet. No parking structure here. No Harley either. A satellite dish dominated the treeless front yard, but that was it for ornamentation. Despite the lack of greenery, we were close to the marshes here. I could smell them, and I felt a pang of homesickness.
I parked at the edge of the sparse lawn and followed the driveway to wooden steps. The tire tracks in the sand were easy to spot, but hard to interpret. I decided to leave the plaster casting and forensic analysis to the crime scene team and focus instead on the yard.
What would Trey do? I thought.
Trey wouldn’t be here, a voice in my head said back.
I ignored the voice and put on my sunglasses, then pulled a pair of rubber gloves from my bag. One thing Trey had taught me was to be prepared. He’d also taught me to observe, get a clear overall picture before moving to specificities. So I walked the perimeter. I walked it first looking at the ground, knowing that my next move would be looking at eye level, then a final time looking up, both clockwise and counterclockwise. I never got that far, however, because I found what I was looking for on my first try—several jagged punctures in the bare baseboards.
Bullet holes.
I knelt, focused my cell phone to take a picture. Bullets went in a straight line. So I traced my steps backwards, cocking my index finger and thumb into a pretend pistol and following the line of sight all the way back to the end of the driveway, keeping an eye on the ground around my feet. If the shooter had used a semi-auto…
It took two minutes of hard looking before I spotted the spent brass in the high weeds of the drainage ditch. I snapped their picture too, but didn’t touch them. Not .22s, which meant they hadn’t come from the handgun Hope had found. These were .45 ACPs, a massive caliber perfectly capable of making the holes Trey had spotted in the trunk.
I went around back, grateful for the lack of nosy neighbors. The backyard had a new deck, plain and simple and smelling of fresh wood, freckled with rain and pollen. It had a southern exposure, a deck chair for sunbathing, and a shade to keep the sun from the kitchen windows. John was always good with his hands, whether woodworking or wielding the tattoo needle. He’d built this to welcome Hope back, to make this place feel like a home for her.
I pulled open the screen door and inserted the key. Both the regular lock and deadbolt were engaged, no sign of forced entry, and I pulled it closed behind me as I stepped into the kitchen.
The space was small, ill-lighted, with avocado green counters and faux wood laminate, not the kind of kitchen featured in Southern Living. I spotted a box of cereal on the counter, a rinsed bowl and spoon in the sink. I opened the refrigerator, which looked like my refrigerator, with only the basics—milk, beer, sandwich meat, condiments. There was a brown circle of gummy tea spilled on one of the shelves under a half-full pitcher, but that was the only mess.
I checked the living room next. The front door was closed, but only the knob lock was engaged, not the deadbolt. The sofa and chairs and coffee table were well-made, but dated and dinged, thrift store finds most likely. John was good at that, picking and poking through trash to find the treasure. A large stain spread in front of the television. I knelt and examined it, breathing a sigh of relief to find only the ghost of a long-ago spill. No blood, no brains.
I flipped the light in the bedroom and stopped short. The room was messy, but not lived-in messy like the rest of the trailer. Random messy. Two drawers on the dresser dangled open, a pair of jeans hanging out. The bedclothes lay on the floor in a pile, the pillows too. A heap of dirty clothes sat next to an empty wicker basket. I picked up a stack of camisoles lying half-folded on the floor and pressed them to my nose. They smelled fresh and clean, like fabric softener.
My knees shook, and I sat on the edge of the bed. The bedroom had been searched. Not the living room, not the kitchen. Which meant that whoever had done the searching had abandoned the search, either because they’d found what they were looking for or because they’d been surprised. And from the ballistic evidence I’d seen in the front yard, I was guessing the latter. Something had happened here. Something that ended in violence.
“He didn’t run away,” I said out loud.
And then I heard it—the slow roll of tires on sand, the idle of an engine. The slam of a car door followed, and then another. I went to the window, Trey’s voice yammering in my head about mobile home construction and bullet caliber as I pulled back the thin cotton curtain.
Cops. Two of them. Not random psychopaths. I felt a surge of relief, followed quickly by a ripple of oh-no. There I was, at a crime scene, on property that belonged to a man gone missing and a woman fresh out of jail.
I saw one of the cops walk around to the back of my car. I cursed again. Running my license plates. So either they were there because the Atlanta PD had drop-kicked John’s disappearance down Savannah Metro way, or because somebody else had seen me prowling around and called them to investigate. I couldn’t decide which scenario was more problematic.
I pulled out my phone, dialed 911. When the operator answered, I said, “I’d like to report a burglary. I’m at 207…Oh wait, I see you have officers already here. Thank you for your quick and efficient service.”
I hung up. Left my carry bag lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. Peeled off the cat-burglar gloves. I opened the front door very slowly using the hem of my tee shirt. The cops looked up as I came onto the front porch, and I saw their elbows dip to touch the butts of the pistols in their holsters. Training, I knew. Double-checking for the weapon. Nothing sinister, but I gulped anyway.
“That was fast,” I said.
The young one looked puzzled and checked his orders. “What was fast?”
“You guys getting here since I just this very second called the station to report a burglary.”
The older one frowned. “Are you Hope Lyle?”
“No, I’m her friend. Tai Randolph. Real name’s Teresa Ann, but everybody calls me Tai.” I smiled. “I suppose you’ve heard that the residents of this trailer are both missing, and that I was checking on them when I found the place like this, which is what prompted me to immediately call the police.”
I kept my hands where they could see them, empty and open. The cops looked at each other. The younger was dark and tall, the older one pale and short. They made a pair of suspicious ying-yang bookends.
“Can you verify that you have permission to be on these premises?”
“I can. Not from Hope or John, of course, both of them being, you know, missing. But I got this address and the key from a mutual friend, John’s employer.”
I gave them Train’s business card, making sure they saw the embossed cross on it. One of them took notes, the other kept an eye on the front yard.
“You’ll find my sneaker prints in the driveway, and around back on the deck. Other than that, it’s exactly the same as when I came in.” I smiled bigger. “I date a cop, so I know better than to tamper with evidence.”
They had moved from baffled to inquisitive. This wasn’t what they’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the big bad unexpected. No corpses, no shooting, only little old me. And they
were relieved to discover they could handle me easily.
“Do you mind if we come inside?” the shorter one said.
I stepped back from the door. “Oh, please do.”
***
I sat on the sofa with my knees tucked together, trying to look innocuous while they searched the trailer. They looked mostly bored until my phone rang. Then both their heads swiveled in my direction.
I held up the phone. “Y’all care if I take this?”
The taller one made a “go ahead” gesture. I put it to my ear.
“Hey there, Reynolds.”
“Good morning, m’dear. How are you this fine day?”
Both cops were pretending to examine the TV stand, but they were really listening to my conversation.
“Oh, same as always. And you?”
“Splendid. I have to be brief, but I thought you might want to know…I did some asking around. As it turns out, there has been a sizeable collection of Confederate memorabilia put up for sale recently, as one grouping. Fine pieces, mostly martial. Extremely reasonable but non-negotiable price.”
That meant somebody was looking for a quick sale. “Was it connected to one of the, ah, cultural groups we discussed?”
“Not exactly. It was your cousin Jefferson.”
Chapter Twenty-two
The sun was setting by the time I finished with the cops and pointed the car east on Highway 80, the last leg of the Dixie Overland route. The tide had just turned, and the iodine smell of the pluff mud hung thick in the air. A wet breeze blew in from the Atlantic, heavy with deep water, and I rolled the windows down to let it ride along with me.
A stranger would miss the entrance to Boone’s place. No sign announced it, no mailbox marked it. A stand of palmetto palms shaded an oyster-shell driveway, which curved out of sight like a trail of breadcrumbs. Boone’s private peninsula was a world apart from the sun-bright, beach-happy madness of the highway. A dark, cool country all its own, sovereign unto itself.
I turned down the path. Cat briers and blackberry bushes crowded the lane, morning glory too. Live oaks more than a hundred years old arched overhead in a canopy of gray moss and green leaf. The path had only one destination—Boone’s. No way to turn around, no side roads. Boone owned all twenty acres of it, and he and his family were its only occupants.