Niceville

by Carsten Stroud

  Nick shrugged.

  “Well, his story held up until Boots got him to the ER medics. They were cleaning him up and a big plastic Baggie fell out of his track suit pocket. Skate laces. Roll of duct tape. Baby oil. A box cutter.”

  “Tools for rape.”

  “Yes. Tools for a rape. So Boots ran him and he was wanted up in Charleston for forcible sexual assault. Looks like a chain of attacks on young women, mostly joggers, going way back.”

  “Not Ziggy Danich? Vice has been after him for months. Never able to pin anything on him.”

  “Yeah. I know. I remember you asking about him a while back.”

  “So they got him, finally?”

  “Looks like it will stand up. Reasonable search, chain of evidence. Ziggy might be the guy who did those two young girls down by the Tulip two weeks ago. They’re doing the DNA now.”

  Tig stopped, seemed to wait for Nick to say something, which didn’t happen.

  “So you didn’t see anything?”

  “No. Not a thing.”

  “Thing is, guy said he had no idea who attacked him, never saw it coming, no idea where the rape stuff came from. Said it must have been planted.”

  “They all say that.”

  Tig nodded. “They do.”

  He looked troubled, moved a couple of things around on his desk and then moved them back.

  Nick waited, but Tig seemed to be done.

  He wasn’t.

  “And you got nothing to add, Nick?”

  “Not a thing. Good for Boots. Oughta get an attaboy for nailing that cockroach. Nobody else could. Sometimes you just get lucky.”

  Tig was quiet. Then he said, “Well, it doesn’t pay to get too damned lucky. This kind of thing happened again, we’d have to figure we had some sort of vigilante thing going on. Remember that guy last year, in The Glades, we found him lying beside his car, in his garage, somebody took a bat to him? Every bone in both legs smacked into splinters? Never gonna walk again?”

  “DeShawn Coles. Ran underage whores out of the Double Deuce in Tin Town. Mean as a razorback hog. We were looking at him for pouring bleach down the throat of a little runaway named Shaniqua Throne, but she died before she could ID anybody.”

  “Yeah. Him. Thing is, once, it’s chance, twice, it’s a coincidence. Three times—that’s different. Gotta start looking at it. A vigilante, hell, even the Feds would start looking at that. And the press would suck it up like a dual-bag Dyson. They’d never lay off till the guy was caught.”

  “Yeah,” said Nick. “I can see that.”

  “Yeah. So can I.”

  Now Tig was finished.

  Point made.

  Some air came back into the room.

  “Okay,” said Nick. “Well, I’ll go jump on the Cotton thing, then?”

  “Yes,” said Tig, leaning back and folding his arms across his big bony chest, cracking a broad smile. “Right after the Teague thing. Check that out, and then go see what happened to Delia Cotton. You go do that. Maybe it’ll take your edges off.”

  “I have edges?”

  “Just go, will you?”

  Tony Bock Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone

  Like the boy in the fairy tale who stole these magic beans from the evil giant and planted them in his garden by the light of the silvery moon and then woke up the next day all crazy with excitement to see what radical magical delight had popped out of the … well, Tony Bock woke up in his over-the-garage flat in The Glades late on Saturday morning in that kind of state, anxious to see what his e-mail to the County CID about this Kevin David Dennison had wrought. It was a question about which Bock, in the cold light of dawn, was sorely conflicted.

  He was partly on fire to see what had happened and partly sick with dread that in some totally unexpected way he had thoroughly buggered up his life with some obscure but legally cataclysmic blunder—abuse of the Internet? crossing phone lines in the commission of felony privacy invasion?—and was therefore about to reap the ugly reapings of his heedless night before.

  No, he had to know NOW.

  Bock couldn’t even wait to brush his teeth or have some coffee or even get decently dressed. He sat down and fired up his computer, started a search string looking for any news of Kevin David Dennison Saint Innocent Orthodox Niceville CID and was, a few minutes later, oddly relieved when the string retrieved nothing at all.

  So, as of this point, no action from the forces of justice. His heart rate began to return to normal. He leaned back and reached—out of habit—for one of the few cold Stellas that had survived his winnowing hand the night before.

  He popped the cap with an opener shaped like a naked woman, leaned back in his chair, sipping from the bottle, and began considering the state of his world. Okay. Fine. Nothing yet.

  He would have to be patient.

  Remember the spider who waits?

  The lion that lieth in the long grasses?

  Fine.

  A pause here for self-examination.

  What exactly was he feeling?

  Now that his fear was gone, or at least temporarily abated, Bock was feeling…

  … disappointed.

  He had, without reason, hoped that there might be something like an arrest notice—a suicide after a running gun battle with the cops was too much to hope for—or that at least there would be some kind of ripple on the surface of the Niceville community that suggested an investigation was under way. And, he suddenly realized, there might well be.

  After all, the cops weren’t going to alert the media on the basis of an anonymous e-mail tip, no matter how well composed and electrifying.

  No, of course; they were quietly looking into the thing first, which was only right and proper.

  Bock reminded himself, again, that in this new enterprise, he would have to be patient …

  … and judicious …

  … and …

  … well … fuck that.

  Let’s face it—he was still pretty disappointed.

  He called up the e-mail he had sent to Lieutenant Commander Tyree Sutter, CO of the Cullen and Belfair County Criminal Investigation Division, and stared at it for a time.

  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.

  He leaned into the keyboard, thought about it for a moment, and then forwarded this same e-mail—through a server somewhere east of Eden—to the city editor at the Niceville Register, the station manager at WEZE EZ JAZZn’ROCK, based in Gracie, to the manager at the Cap City Fox News affiliate, and to rector.parish@stinnocentorthdox.org.

  This exercise provided a frisson that lasted not nearly long enough, since this sort of activity bears some parallels to crack addiction.

  After a short time, he was edgy again, feeling that there was still useful work to be done here.

  He tilted the bottle up, drained it to half, listening in a distracted way to the staccato yapping of Mrs. Kinnear’s demented shi-tzu and staring at the screen. Something was surfacing. He could feel it working up, something inspired at first by the sight of his own nakedness and then becoming more specific as he recalled some of the insights he had gained into the people of Niceville in the course of his day job.

  Not the natural course, since the job description didn’t include snooping through boxes of tax records in the basement or poking around in old family albums up in the attic. Amazing the stuff that people hang on to, or forget they ever had, or think they’ll get away with keeping.

  For example, the cosmetic surgeon with a cardboard box full of counterfeit med school diplomas. The retired letter carrier who had seventeen bags of undelivered mail in her furnace room. The pharmacist with several cartons of stolen prescription drugs in her closet.

  And there was a guy, a bank manager type, had this nice big rancher n
ear Mauldar Field, a pillar of the community, who was taking peep shots of his teenage daughters in the bathroom.

  Bock, in the course of his professional labors at the banker’s house, had found the tiny camera in the ceiling of the shower stall, concealed in the fan housing. After some detective work, he had traced the fiber-optic cable to a still-frame recorder in the attic, hidden inside a trunk full of old clothes.

  Bock had managed to copy the contents of the camera’s hard drive, getting at least a thousand different shots of the girls over several years, doing all the things one normally does in a bathroom, the girls of course totally oblivious, which was the whole point.

  Bock had savored the shots for a very long time—they gave him a godlike sense of power over these half-grown girls—seeing what no man had yet seen, watching them do all their secret female rituals.

  But even that sick thrill wore off after a while, as they will, and Bock had posted the shots—anonymously—on this voyeur website, shredding his own copies as soon as the download was complete.

  But what was the guy’s name?

  Can’t mess with a guy’s life without a name.

  It’d be in his work records, on the Niceville Utility laptop, wouldn’t it? One of his first out-calls, maybe five, six years back?

  Very risky to tap that source, Bock thought, trying to calm himself down.

  Remember the rules.

  No linkages.

  But if he only used one, then there’d be no linkage, right? You can’t draw a line between one dot and no dot.

  No.

  Not a banker.

  The guy wasn’t a banker.

  What do you call a guy who comptrols stuff?

  A comptroller, right?

  It was rising up in the back of his mind. The trunk in the attic was filled with old clothes, but they were weird old clothes, leathers and feathers and beady folky thingies …

  … flowers …

  … boxes …

  … tiny purses …

  It was all in there somewhere …

  Think, Bock, think …

  Visualize …

  Wicker?

  Straw?

  Weavings?

  And then it all came back in a rush.

  Littlebasket.

  Morgan Littlebasket.

  He googled it, and there he was, a craggy-faced leathery old buzzard, smiling out like a Redskin Rushmore from the website banner of something called the Cherokee Nation Trust, based in Sallytown. Some more googling delivered up a news photo dated five months ago, the guy posing with two very foxy-looking young daughters at a graveside, with a caption underneath—

  A tableau of mourning as Cherokee Clan Chief Morgan Littlebasket stands with his daughters Twyla and Bluebell Littlebasket at the grave of his wife, Lucy Bluebell Littlebasket (neé Tallpony).

  Bock could feel his blood rising as he looked at the two pretty young women in their mourning dresses, holding fresh-cut flowers, so solemn and sad and brave at the funeral of their sainted mother, and here was the All-Seeing Eye of Tony Bock looking down upon them and knowing pretty much all there was to know about what was under those tight black dresses.

  But the shots.

  The proof.

  He had shredded his own.

  They were gone forever.

  And he had no reason to believe that the twisted old pervert would still have his spy camera hidden in that trunk, even if Bock could talk his way back into the house, which would be a damned stupid thing to do in the first place.

  But Bock needed those shots.

  Would they still be on that pervo voyeur website? Maybe in some sort of National Pervo Library of Sexual Congress?

  Possibly.

  He held his fingers over the keyboard, hesitating, like a boy selecting a chocolate from a gift box, his mouth open and his thick lips wet. The fact that he was, in effect, about to commit a kind of suicide was not clear to him at the time.

  Beau Norlett Meets Brandy Gule

  Nick took the unmarked navy blue Crown Vic. He let Beau Norlett drive because otherwise, with nothing to occupy him, Beau tended to chatter and Nick wanted to have some time to think about being turned down for a re-up by Dale himself, a personal no from a good friend and therefore deeply cutting.

  Dale Sievewright and Nick Kavanaugh went back a long way, long before Yemen, all the way back to Benning and Fort Campbell. Dale’s saying no to Nick’s reenlistment when the whole Army was being bled white and even the motor pool pogues and the weekend wannabe warriors were pulling multiple redeployments—it just really shook him up.

  He came out of his complicated thoughts vaguely aware that Beau was humming to himself, some sort of gospel number—he and May were Pentecostals—they were on Lower Powder Springs going cross-town towards the probation offices in Tin Town, and Niceville was ticking along in its own sweet way, the haphazard tangle of streets and avenues shaded with oaks and pines and beeches, Spanish moss hanging down, the streets and sidewalks packed with people and traffic, everybody coming and going in the steady gray rain, their figures blurred through the windshield glass, the Crown Vic’s tires hissing on the road, fog drifting over it all.

  “Beau, you have your blues, don’t you?”

  Beau looked over at him, back out to the road.

  “Well, you know, sometimes I get a bit down, you know, I mean the job don’t—”

  “Dress blues, Beau. Dress blues.”

  Beau ducked his head, a smile lighting him up.

  “Oh, man, Nick, I thought you was asking—”

  “Tig wants us to go down to Cap City on Friday. Represent the unit. That’s a full-dress thing.”

  Norlett looked worried.

  “Ahh, look, the catch is, Nick, I kinda gained some weight since I bought them. Don’t know if I could get—”

  Here realization dawned upon him.

  “You mean Tig wants us both to go. Me going with you? You and me? For the unit?”

  “That’s the plan. How much weight?”

  “I … maybe fifteen, twenty pounds. Doubt I could button up the tunic.”

  “You’ve got four days. Get Gabriel to let it out for you. Wear a corset if you have to. Gabriel has them in the stockroom. Don’t be ashamed. Dress blues are a bitch to wear well. A lot of guys use a corset to get trim. Do it if you have to. I want you looking strack. This means a lot to Tig.”

  Beau’s face knotted up.

  “Strack?”

  “It’s an Army term. Strictly According to Regulations. Strack.”

  Beau didn’t get it. Nick sighed and left him with the problem. In a minute Beau had forgotten it, his expression opening up again, delighted, his happy face as shiny as a banister.

  “I will, Nick—I mean, I’m honored to be asked—”

  “Here it is,” said Nick, cutting in.

  They were rolling up to a low strip mall on the edge of Tin Town, Niceville’s version of a dangerous slum, a run-down neighborhood that had grown up along the muddy banks of the Tulip River a mile north of Tulip Bend, which was the beginning of the club and tourist districts.

  Tin Town was everything Americans have come to expect in a dangerous slum, twenty-five maybe thirty square blocks of crumbling wooden bungalows, fenced-off lots, car wreckers, bars, mom-and-pop stores all barred up like forts, trailer parks walled in behind rusted chain-link fences, bricked-up speaks, and roach-infested crack houses.

  The main industry ruling the place was a lethal combination of grinding hard times, blood-simple gunsels, pointless death, and blue ruin.

  The strip mall had a busted-down 1950s-era sign at one end with letters spelling THE MIRACLE MILE peeling off like the mange.

  The Miracle Mile, which was neither a miracle nor a mile, contained about fifteen ramshackle stores in a ragged rambling row, the eaves sagging and tiles missing from the roofs.

  The local branch of Belfair and Cullen County Probation and Correctional Services—known in Tin Town as the Probe—had a white-painted steel g
rate covering the old glass window wall, a storefront operation sandwiched in between a dollar store and a porn shop.

  The porn shop—the most prosperous business in the strip—had a blue neon sign in front that flashed out the name WIGGLES AND GIGGLES over and over again. Every time he saw that sign Nick wanted to put a bullet in it.

  As Beau brought the car to a stop in the slot in front of the Probe, four dingo-dog-looking black kids in ragged hip-hop togs started to shuffle off to the far end of the strip, one kid looking back over his shoulder, feral eyes sharp under his sideways cap. Beau and Nick looked at them in silence.

  “Which kid is holding?” Nick asked.

  Beau gave it a minute.

  “The one with the gym bag, because if we chase him he can throw it over a fence and then we have to prove possession.”

  “Very good. See the Goth chick in the Doc Martens? Down by the Helpy Selfy?”

  Beau’s eyes slid over to an anorexic white girl with black holes for eyes and spiky blue hair. She had on a pair of shredded purple stay-ups and a black leather jacket six sizes too large.

  She was leaning against the wall outside the milk store, popping her gum and staring fixedly out into the street. She couldn’t have looked any more guilty if she’d been whistling the theme from Mayberry R.F.D.

  “You want me to do a field interview?”

  “I do,” said Nick.

  He got out of the passenger side, leaned down and spoke to Beau through the open window.

  “Just be careful. Watch her hands. Her street name’s Iris but her real name is Brandy Gule. She may deal shit for Lemon Featherlight, we don’t know yet, but her being here this morning when we’re supposed to have a talk with Lemon tells us something. That’s why I want you to have her in the car when I get back. I want a chance to talk to her. Hear me, Beau, look at me. She looks fifteen, but she’s twenty-four, a runaway from a small town in the Carolinas.

  “She looks like a kid.”

  His voice was soft, sympathetic. Nick leaned in to get a straight line on Beau’s eyes.

  “She’s not, Beau. You gotta get that. She killed a jail guard with a nail file. Stuck it in his eye. And then she tore his jugular open. He bled to death on the floor of her cell. Camera shows her sitting there on the cot, chewing gum, watching while he thrashes around on the tiles.”