Niceville

by Carsten Stroud

  In the northeast, looming high over the town like a storm front, blurred by the rain, he could just make out Tallulah’s Wall, which made him think of Crater Sink, which brought the Teague case back in full HDTV.

  Even before Sylvia Teague went into Crater Sink—if she really had—Nick had always thought that Tallulah’s Wall had a kind of sickness cloud floating over it, and if anybody had told him that even the Indians who used to live here had stayed away from the place he’d have believed it.

  Most small towns would have made a feature like Tallulah’s Wall and Crater Sink a theme park and put ads in USA Today trying to drum up tourism, but not Niceville.

  Early on, Nick had asked Reed Walker why Tallulah’s Wall had everybody in Niceville so spooked. Reed had stared at his hands for a while and then started up a story about something that was said to have happened at Crater Sink back in the twenties, or maybe earlier, or later, he wasn’t sure, then he seemed to think better of it, ordered two more beers, and managed to change the subject.

  Nick stood in the hall outside Tig’s office for a while, turning the memory over, his mind in neutral, watching the cloud banks get caught on Tallulah’s Wall, spilling their cargo of gray rain down on the town.

  On the far side of the Dome of the Rock, as they called City Hall, because the mayor’s name was Little Rock Mauldar, Nick could see a section of the Tulip River, running mud brown and churning fast after two hours of hard rain. He shook himself loose from the dull gray landscape, the dull gray morning, and walked into Tig Sutter’s office.

  Tig looked up as Nick came in, an up-from-under over the rim of his steel gray reading glasses. He leaned back in his wooden swivel chair, making the thing creak like a cellar door in a horror movie.

  “Nick. How’s the Lovely?”

  “Still with me.”

  “Probably just hanging around to see what the heck you’ll do next. I hear she nailed that Bock asshole.”

  Nick smiled at that.

  “She did.”

  “I always liked Ted Monroe. He’s a damn good judge of character. Kate say how Bock took it?”

  “Poorly.”

  “Screw him.”

  “Metaphorically?”

  “Either way. Take a pew, Nick.”

  Nick plucked a wooden chair from under a picture of the president. The president, his chin cocked just so, his eyes all squinty, a thin-lipped smile like a gunfighter, was staring off into the middle distance, as if he could see some sunny green uplands that he was going to lead you to.

  Nick sat, lightly, on the chair’s forward edge, his forearms on his knees, the plastic cup turning in his long-fingered hands. Tig had some of his, Nick had some of his, and they sat there for a time in a companionable silence. Tig was shifting around in his chair a bit and Nick realized the man was nervous about something.

  “Okay, well, first some hard news. Nick, I got a letter from a Colonel Dale Sievewright, down at Benning. It was about your request to re-up for combat deployment with the Fifth SF again …?”

  Nick looked at him but said nothing.

  Tig shrugged.

  “You were gonna pull out on me?”

  “I was,” said Nick. “No offense, Tig.”

  “None taken. I hired you, I didn’t buy your ugly white ass down at the Wally Mart. I know you miss the action. I was worried a little that maybe you and Kate were having some trouble at home?”

  Nick was quiet for a time. When he spoke there was something moving under the tight skin over his cheekbones, a pale glimmer in his eyes.

  “No. Kate is … Kate. She couldn’t be better. When she comes in the door, she makes my day. It’s just …”

  Tig set the cup down, creaked back in the chair again.

  “Pale?”

  Nick sipped at the cup, said nothing for a time.

  “Yes. That’s a good word. Like all the color went away. I mean, Kate wants me to put a deck on the back. So I go down to Billy Dials, I walk around, look at the cedar, I can’t seem to figure out why in the hell Kate would want a cedar deck. I mean, what’s a cedar deck for?”

  “You know. Beer. Football. Barbecues.”

  “Barbecues,” said Nick, looking into his cup. “Barbecues make me think of Fallujah, those contractors hanging from meat hooks on that bridge.”

  Tig looked out the window at the rain sheeting down. There was thunder rolling around in the distance, getting closer, and lightning flaring up inside the cloud mass. A crappy morning if there ever was one.

  “I have spent considerable time trying to forget that, Nick, so thanks for the reminder. You think Fallujah smelled like barbecue, try watching an Abrams burn up with a whole crew inside. You talk this over with Kate before you sent the letter?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “Okay. Well, no need to spook her with it now. I’m sorry to say this, I really am, although I’m happy not to be losing you, but Sievewright turned you down.”

  Nick nodded, took it in, his face closing up.

  “The Wadi Doan?”

  Tig nodded, his expression kindly.

  “The Wadi Doan. Al Kuribayah. Yemen. That’s not going to go away, Nick. Not your fault, nobody ever thought that. They were okay with JAG, but another combat deployment … I guess not.”

  “The optics.”

  “And that video.”

  Nick said nothing.

  Tig let it slide.

  Nick, ready to change the topic, said, “Anything for us on what happened yesterday?”

  Tig rubbed his cheeks with both hands, looking suddenly old.

  “You walked the site. What’d you think?”

  Nick told him.

  Tig nodded, having come to the same conclusion on his own. Cold-assed murder, plain and simple.

  “We getting a piece of anything?” Nick asked.

  “There’ll be one hell of a funeral, for one thing,” said Tig, looking out the window at the rain coming down. “There’ll be uniforms coming in to Cap City from all over the country, far away as Canada, England. Christ, four guys. Plus the two people in the Live Eye chopper.”

  “The hell with the people in the chopper. Media vultures.”

  Nick didn’t like the media. Tig, who felt the same way but had to work with them, liked to keep Nick far away from people with cameras and microphones. He changed the subject.

  “I’d really like you to go, if you would. Next Friday? For our unit? Maybe you could take Beau?”

  Nick looked down at his hands.

  “I’ve had it with military funerals, Tig.”

  “So have I,” said Tig, lowering his voice and leaning across his desk. “But I don’t want us represented by some of these here younger guys, God love ’em, none of them know how to wear dress blues. Don’t even know how to wear a business suit, for that. You do. And Beau will do whatever you tell him. He wants to be you when he grows up. Come on. I’m asking here.”

  Nick was quiet, remembering all the funerals he had been to, not all of them in crisp dress blues with taps playing, some of them just six guys in ragged BDUs standing around a smoking crater, shoveling gravel over what was left of a friend.

  “Okay. I’ll go. One of the guys was a friend of Reed’s, so he’s going. Kate’d like me to go too.”

  Nick’s mind went back to the bank robbery.

  “About Gracie, anybody looking at the rollover on the interstate?”

  “The eighteen-wheeler?”

  “Yeah. It bothers me. A full load of rebar, spreads it all over six lanes of traffic, spears a van full of church ladies. Two killed, but the driver walks.”

  Tig looked at Nick, thinking it over.

  “You’re thinking about the timing?”

  “I am. When’d it roll over?”

  Tig shuffled some papers, picked up a printout, riffled through it.

  “Fourteen forty-one hours.”

  “There you go. These people hit the bank in Gracie, what, forty minutes later? Worked out pretty good for them, didn’t
it, since almost every available unit, ground and air, was tied up with the rollover? Anybody looking into the driver?”

  Tig shook his head.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Tig flipped up the edge of a printout, ran a finger down the paragraph.

  “Lyle Preston Crowder. Six years with Steiger Freightways. No criminal sheet and no record of DUI or anything else. Other than a lousy credit history, which nowadays who doesn’t have, he’s shiny as a new dime.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He was banged up. Pretty hysterical. They’ve got him sedated and under guard at Sorrows down in Cap City.”

  “Guard? Guard from what?”

  “The people in the minivan had husbands and fathers. People around here like to settle their own beefs. There’s been some talk.”

  “Okay. I get that. Anyway, you might say something to Boonie.”

  Tig nodded, made a note on a yellow pad.

  “I will. So. Work. How’s your sheet?”

  Nick sat back, drained his cup.

  “I have a meet with Lacy Steinert, over in Tin Town. She says one of her clients wants to talk about the Rainey Teague case. Might know something.”

  “What client?”

  “Lemon Featherlight.”

  “Yeah. I heard he got flaked for ecstasy by the goddam DEA. What’s he want?”

  “A deal on the DEA bust, be my guess.”

  “You think Lemon’s worth looking at?”

  Nick shrugged.

  “Lacy’s good people. If she thinks there’s something in it, can’t hurt to go have a coffee. I’d like to clear that one.”

  “Yeah. So would I.”

  There was no need to say anything else. They felt the same way about the Rainey Teague thing, and they both knew it.

  “A year back, isn’t it?” said Tig, as if he wasn’t aware of that down to the hour.

  “To the day,” said Nick.

  “How’s the kid doing?”

  “Still at Lady Grace. Still in a coma.”

  “Rainey was adopted, if I remember? Kate still acting as guardian?”

  “She is. She’s related to Sylvia, and she knows family law. The original adoption thing was handled by a lawyer name of Leah Searle—dead now—had a practice up in Sallytown. Rainey was in some sort of foster home up there. Birth parents apparently died in a barn fire. Kid was made a ward of the county and put into foster care. Kate got the papers from Sylvia’s place after she …”

  “Disappeared,” said Tig, who knew that Nick, until he saw her body, was never going to acknowledge her suicide.

  “Yeah, since then. Leah Searle died the next year, but Kate went over all the papers. Rainey’s the only heir. Kate’s got power of attorney for Rainey, sees to his finances and monitors the Teague portfolio, which is huge. Kept the house as it was, so if Rainey ever comes around, everything will be the way it was on the day he was taken. Gardeners. Cleaners. Has it checked every day by some people from Armed Response.”

  “Kate. Gotta love her. One of my favorite people. Can’t believe you were thinking of going back into the shit, a lady like that at home.”

  On their terms this was an intrusion, but Tig felt it strongly, so he just let it stand.

  Nick understood it.

  Tig was right.

  A moment passed in silence.

  “Okay,” said Tig, changing the tone. “You go see Lacy, let’s hear what Lemon has to say.”

  “I will,” said Nick. “We have anything else?”

  “Yeah,” said Tig, looking troubled. “Vice got an anonymous tip. I didn’t like to hear it.”

  “They get a voice?”

  “No. It was an e-mail. Sort of. But the IP was stripped out, or it was from a computer link we haven’t got a line on yet. I don’t get all that cyber-shit stuff, Nick. Anyway, like I said, untraceable. Anonymous.”

  Nick looked at his hands. Snitches were how it all worked, but nobody liked to work with them.

  “What was the tip?”

  Tig moved his shoulders, hesitated, and then handed a printout across to Nick.

  The custodian at saint innocent orthodox has a history of child sex abuse going back to 1982. His name is kevin david his crimes were committed under the name kevin david dennison his dob is 1956/06/23. look first in maryland. He also is online on AIM as katydee999. You should look at him. a friend.

  Nick read it, handed the sheet back. “Jesus. A friend. Man, I really hate this kind of anonymous shit.”

  Tig’s face said the same thing.

  “So do I. I ran this Kevin David guy and he looks pretty solid. Custodian. Wife died of cancer last year. Grown kids. Has a house up in Sallytown. Lives alone. Nothing against him. I asked around on the quiet. Everybody at the church thinks he’s a saint.”

  “What about Maryland?”

  “I’m waiting for a sheet and a photo. Age and general description is right, but there’s a lot of Kevin Dennisons in the world. I gotta be sure before I let Vice go burn down a guy’s life.”

  “Any whiff of anything?”

  Tig looked down.

  “Yeah. He has a cell phone cluster.”

  “You mean his GPS records. That was fast.”

  “My sister’s family goes to Saint Innocent. They have a girl. I was motivated. I called a friend at Comcast.”

  “Where’s the cluster?”

  “Schoolyards. Playgrounds.”

  “Oh hell.”

  “Yeah,” said Tig. “Oh hell.”

  “You want me to do this?”

  Tig shook his head.

  “Vice already has it. I didn’t want to look like I was getting in the way.”

  Nick looked at the printout again.

  “This e-mail, someone who would send this out, Tig, is a slug. Guy’s capable of a whole lot worse. We should find out who this asshole actually is.”

  “You want to do that?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “I don’t get this cyber shit any better than you do. Do we have anybody around who can look into it? Like one of those tattooed geeks in dispatch?”

  “No. Not like this. Mainly they all sit around and twatter each other on their twats.”

  “I think that’s Twitter, Tig.”

  “Whatever. What about your brother-in-law, that Deitz guy? Doesn’t he have a whole boxcar full of computer wing nuts in that outfit of his?”

  Nick wasn’t very happy with Byron Deitz—something was going sour inside the guy—but he would definitely have guys who could track a cyber trail like this.

  “Okay with me. I’d rather you asked him.”

  Tig was aware that there was some tension between Nick and his brother-in-law.

  “Sure. I’ll ask Deitz myself. Off the record, like. But I got something for you to do yourself. Take your mind off this Army thing. You know Delia Cotton, the Sulfur King’s widow, up in The Chase?”

  “I know the Cotton mansion. Called Temple Hill. Big yellow-brick place, wraparound porch, lots of that white gingerbread crap in every corner.”

  “Well, she’s gone missing.”

  Nick sat up, life coming back into his frame.

  “Missing?”

  “Yes. Got a cleaning lady named Alice Bayer. Went there today to deliver some groceries, found the door open, music playing. Half a scotch on the table. House wide open and Delia Cotton gone. Cat gone too, some kind of Maine Coon cat. Name of Mildred Pierce. Maybe also the yard man, fellow named Gray Haggard. His Packard was in the drive, but no sign of him either.”

  “Relatives?”

  “All dead. Maybe a few friends in her book club. Patrol guys did some leg work, got diddly. She’s gone, Nick. With her yard man. Gone like the snows of yesteryear. That’s Proust, you know.”

  Nick shook his head.

  “Actually, I don’t think so.”

  Tig lost his smug smile.

  “Not Proust?”

  “No. I mean, he sai
d something like it—about the remembrance of things past, sort of. But he never said anything about the snows of yesteryear.”

  “Then who the fuck did?”

  “I think it was some dead Frog. Gimme a minute. Villon. Yes. François Villon.”

  “What did he say?”

  Nick took a moment.

  “I think he said, Où sont les neiges d’antan?”

  “Which means?”

  “Where are the snows of yesteryear.”

  Tig remained unconvinced.

  “You sure?”

  “I’d have to google it. But I’m pretty sure.”

  Tig looked unhappy.

  “Man. I’ve been throwing that quote around for years. Now I feel like a mook.”

  “Maybe. But you’ve still got your looks. Who’s catching the Cotton thing?”

  “You are. Delia was one of ours. I know the family; they were real good to my dad. Cottons were also one of the Founding Four. A fine lady too.”

  Nick stood up, put the chair back under the president’s dreamy eyes, his faraway look.

  “Can I have Beau?”

  “Beau? He’s pretty raw.”

  “He’s not going to get any better unless we take him around some. Otherwise, he’s just filling a chair and filing shit and losing his nerve.”

  “Okay. Take Beau. It’ll give him a taste. We’ll see what he’s got too. One other thing,” said Tig, as Nick turned to leave. His casual tone became a bit forced. “You run on Patton’s Hard, don’t you? Down there by the Tulip?”

  “Yes.”

  “You run there last night?”

  “Yes. Every night.”

  “Last night?”

  “Every night.”

  “You see a big white guy down there, wearing a blue track suit, a muscle guy?”

  “Nope. Why?”

  “Well, Boots Jackson’s got the motorcycle beat for Patton’s Hard—”

  “I know Boots. He found the last guy who had seen Rainey.”

  “Yeah. Alf Pennington. Anyway, Boots found this guy there around two in the morning, looked like he’d been mugged. Banged around pretty good. Like he had been worked over by a pro. He’ll never look at the same face in his mirror again. Ribs cracked. Nose all over on one side. Cheekbone cracked like an eggshell. Both testicles ruptured and crushed. Effectively castrated, the medics are saying. Also may lose his right eye. Said he was just out jogging and somebody jumped him. Came out of the dark. A random attack.”