Niceville

by Carsten Stroud

  “But maybe he’s more than that too. Maybe he’s an enterprising skanky little pervert. I cannot believe, looking at this setup he’s got here, that Bluebell and I were the only people he’s been fucking over. I think it’s his hobby.”

  Coker took that in. She had a point.

  “So,” he said, meditating upon it, “when he comes around, maybe we start asking him what the fuck else he’s been doing?”

  “And who he’s been doing it to.”

  Coker looked at her, reappraising. He felt himself growing quite fond of Twyla. You never knew where life’s opportunities were to be found. She was a smart girl. She had depths. She’d have to be watched, but she had depths.

  So they waited, listening to Bock wheeze and snuffle and flutter. Twyla poured them both another Stella and Coker worked through two more Camels.

  A while later Bock came around with a jerk and a snort and a yelp worthy of Mrs. Kinnear’s shi-tzu, his eyes blinking, his hands flapping like little pink flippers. He sat up, saw that they were still sitting in front of him, took in the fact that it hadn’t all been some horrible dream. He began to weep in a drizzly, snuffling sort of way.

  “Jeez,” he said, after a bit, wiping his nose on the back of his hand, “what do you guys want?”

  “What have you got?” asked Coker, twirling the revolver again and smiling at Bock through a cloud of smoke. Bock brightened a bit, looked hopeful.

  “You mean like money?”

  “Nope. Got enough money already.”

  “Then … what?”

  “Twyla here thinks you’re an enterprising young guy. What I wanna know, is she right?”

  “I don’t know what she means.”

  Coker cast his gaze to heaven, then back.

  “Sure you do. Twyla here figures she’s not the only person you’ve been fucking over. She thinks that fucking strangers over from the safety of your little hideout here is kind of your hobby. What you do for kicks. Know what? I think she’s right.”

  Coker leaned forward, got in Bock’s face.

  “So here’s the deal, Tony. I like to know useful things. If you can tell me a useful thing, maybe I won’t let Twyla here start in on you. She’s Cherokee, you know that? I think you guys invented scalping, didn’t you, Twyla?”

  “That was the Huron. We did noses and lips.”

  Coker shrugged, smiled at Bock through the smoke. Bock blinked back, glanced over at Twyla, flinched away from her flat glare, swallowed hard, took a moment, and totally ratted out Andy Chu.

  Nick and Kate and Kate and Nick

  They were sitting at the breakfast table with the morning papers, toast and jam and black coffee. Neither of them had slept at all. They’d stayed up and talked all night. Nick was supposed to take a chopper up to VMI to look into Dillon Walker’s disappearance, but he wasn’t ready to leave, and Kate wasn’t ready to let him go yet. The morning was sunny and fresh and cool and it was hard to square the view out the window with what had happened last night. Nick was scanning the front page and Kate was watching him, thinking about the events of the night, trying to walk it back to something she could understand, something she could work into her view of the world as it had always been. So far she wasn’t getting anywhere. Nick stiffened, glanced at her, and then back at the paper.

  “What is it?”

  Nick kept his head down, folded the paper up and set it aside, reached for his coffee.

  “Oh no you don’t,” said Kate, picking up the paper. “What did you see?”

  Nick sat back, sipped at his coffee.

  “First page, under the fold, side banner.”

  Kate found it.

  BODY FOUND IN FOREST

  State police officers doing a search of the woods in the vicinity of last Friday’s fire at the historic Belfair Saddlery discovered the partially decomposed body of a man about a half mile from the site of the fire. The man, described as a white male in his mid-forties, was found lying against a tree. His body showed signs of being partially eaten by coyotes and other scavengers. Initial estimates place the time of death at between four and six o’clock on Friday afternoon. Cause of death was initially thought to be exposure but a preliminary examination at the scene revealed a gunshot wound to the lower back, which nicked an artery, another wound which severed the left ear, and a third wound in the middle of the throat, which caused severe brain damage and a fatal loss of blood. Fingerprint Recognition at the FBI identified the deceased as Merle Louis Zane, an ex-convict who had served time for attempted manslaughter at the Louisiana State Prison in Angola. Police Captain Martin Coors states that investigators are now looking to see if there is a connection between the dead man and the armed robbery carried out a few hours earlier at the First Third Bank in Gracie, where four police officers were gunned down during a pursuit.

  The investigation continues.

  She put the paper down.

  “Merle Zane. Nick, is this the same man who went to see Rainey in the hospital? The man Lemon saw in the elevator?”

  “Lemon saw the man in the elevator on Saturday afternoon. This guy’s been dead since Friday.”

  “Could they have the time of death wrong?”

  “Probably not. Certainly not by twenty-four hours.”

  “So it’s not the same Merle?”

  “How could it be?”

  Kate reread the item, set the paper down.

  “Of course. You’re right. How could it be? Just a coincidence—the name, I mean. An unusual name.”

  “Yeah. Just a coincidence. Talking about Rainey, what are your plans for him?”

  “My plans?” said Kate.

  “Yes. You’re his legal guardian. You’re all he has now. He’ll need weeks of physio, and probably some psychological counseling, but sooner or later they’ll release him. Where’s he gonna go?”

  Kate watched Nick’s face carefully.

  “Are you ahead of me on this?”

  “I’m thinking maybe I am.”

  “It would be a big change for us, taking on a kid.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “You’re not crazy about the idea?”

  “I’m worried about it.”

  “You mean, the responsibility?”

  “No. We can handle that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s the kid himself. I’m not sure how I feel about having him … here. In the house. With us.”

  Kate sat back, her expression hardening.

  “I’m not sure I follow. Nobody worked harder to find that child, nobody cared more about seeing him come out of that coma. I don’t understand this.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Is it that you know something about him that I don’t? Is that it?”

  Nick said nothing.

  “Nick …?”

  “Okay. Reed sent me something this morning. E-mail with an attachment.”

  “What was it?”

  “Something he found on your dad’s computer.”

  “What is it? Where is it?”

  Nick got up, walked down the hall to his office, came back with a printout, laid it down in front of her. A single page, close type, unsigned.

  Rainey Teague DOB questions: memo for Kate Searched Cullen County census for period surrounding R’s DOB with Gwinnetts found no entry. No entry in surrounding parishes no entry in Belfair, no State or County Records show any certificate of R’s birth or baptism. No record in adjoining states, counties, or parishes. No sign R was born or baptized anywhere in US, Canada, or Mexico in any date range corresponding to his stated age. Foster parents Zorah and Martin Palgrave: found entry Cullen County Registry of Birth Martin Palgrave born Sallytown November 7 1873 married Zorah Palgrave Sallytown Methodist March 15 1893. Palgraves received credit letter signed G. Ruelle April 12 1913 “for care and confinement Clara Mercer and delivery of healthy male child March 2nd 1913.”

  Martin and Zorah Palgrave operated printing shop that created tintype print Niceville Familie
s Jubilee 1910.

  Indications Leah Searle made same findings re Rainey adoption and communicated same to Miles Teague at his office in Cap City on May 9 2002 prior to adoption from alleged “Palgrave foster home,” no actual trace of which can be found in any taxpayer list or census other than in Cullen County census of 1914.

  Conclusion: further study required to verify place of birth, true identity, and origins of person now known as Rainey Teague.

  Query Miles Teague suicide possible result of his realization that Rainey Teague’s recovery from Ethan Ruelle crypt was related to R’s uncertain origins. Otherwise it is inexplicable.

  Must place all this before Kate now, since she, as his legal guardian, will be the obvious choice to provide him home until he comes of legal age. These issues need to be resolved ASAP.

  Kate read it twice, a third time.

  “What does this mean, Nick?”

  “What it says. Clara Mercer delivered a healthy male child at the Palgrave home on the second day of March in 1913.”

  “But I looked into the Palgraves. Martin and Zorah. The records were right there, in Leah Searle’s files.”

  “But you never found them, did you? The Palgraves? No trace anywhere?”

  “No. But Leah Searle must have. She laid it all out in her records. Including Rainey’s birth certificate.”

  “When was Rainey born?”

  Kate went inward, remembering. Her expression shifted and her lips went a little blue.

  “March 2, 2000.”

  “Where?”

  “In Sallytown. Nick, this is … it’s all wrong. I don’t know where Dad is going with this—”

  “I’d say, neither did he. But he was coming down to talk it out with you. Reed found a copy of this file sitting in your dad’s printer. He found the digital copy on his computer. The document had been modified only a few minutes before he printed it out, and he printed it out at 14:37 yesterday.”

  “Right after he talked to me?”

  “That’s what the file says.”

  Kate looked at Nick.

  “Rainey … Rainey is not … he’s not—”

  “Ninety-nine years old?”

  “You cannot believe that?”

  For a while Nick said nothing.

  “No, I guess I don’t.”

  “Then what do you believe?”

  “What do I believe, Kate? I believe I don’t want that boy living in my house, not right now.”

  “You can’t mean that, Nick. Not you. He has nowhere else to go. I have no choice. I’m all he has. I’m his guardian. We’re all the family he has now. You and me. You know we have to take him in. You know that. You’re all about duty and service and honor. That’s what this is. I know you understand that.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  She was quiet for a while.

  “And, for all we know, all this confusion about Rainey’s documentation could just be some kind of bureaucratic bungle. God knows we’ve both seen enough of that, between the law and the Army.”

  Nick had to admit she was right, and it showed on his face. Kate softened.

  “I know this is a lot to take in, honey.”

  “Yes. But I think you’re right. It’s something we owe the kid. He has no one else.”

  “So … you’re okay with it?”

  “Yes. I’m okay with it.”

  “You sound like it’s a death sentence.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes. You do. It’s in your voice. Is that what you think it is?”

  “No. Not that.”

  “What, then?”

  Kate waited a full minute for Nick’s answer.

  “I’m afraid we’re letting the outside come in. But I’m with you. I’ll stand by him.”

  Kate smiled, kissed his cheek, sat back.

  “Come what may?”

  “Come what may.”

  Morgan Littlebasket Weaves It All Together

  Morgan Littlebasket was in his Cessna, soaring like an eagle, gliding in a perfect arc along the rim of Tallulah’s Wall, skimming the treetops so close he was getting lash marks on the leading edge of his wing tips and really upsetting the crows. He was wearing his favorite rig, his Flying Tigers jacket and his Army Air Corps–issue Ray-Ban aviators, and he had the cockpit mirror set so he could see himself at the controls. The engine note was a pleasing baritone hum and his hands on the controls were rock steady.

  Overhead the sun was climbing into a blue sky over Niceville and far below his starboard wing the Tulip River looked like a ribbon of golden light as it snaked through the city center. A haze was lying over Niceville, smoke and fumes and mist, but to his eyes it gave the town a soft-focus 1940s look that went very well with his outfit. He was feeling like a fighter pilot, cruising for Nips in the South China Sea, Van Johnson as a wingman and Betty Grable waiting for him back at the field. He banked left, sliding away and down, and flew right along the Tulip for a while, at a very illegal thousand feet, but he didn’t do that for long. He pulled back on the stick and the plane rose again, the lift so strong he could feel it in his cheeks and along his thighs, and now he was heading for Tallulah’s Wall again, the limestone cliff filling up his windshield. He had a picture of his family on the sun visor and he reached up to touch a fingertip to Lucy’s cheek, thinking how lucky she had been to have known him. He dipped the stick a degree, steadied his course, and flew his Cessna straight into the side of Tallulah’s Wall at what they later estimated to be roughly two hundred miles an hour.

  The impact caused the fuel tanks, just topped up an hour earlier, to explode, and a red and black flower of flame blossomed across the face of the cliff, drawing everyone’s attention down in the town. The concussive wave rippled across the rooftops of the city, bouncing people out of their Sunday-morning sleep. It shook the windows of Brandy Gule’s flat over the needle exchange hard enough to wake up Lemon Featherlight, who had just now fallen asleep while she watched over him, and it thumped pretty hard against the glass of the conservatory where Kate and Beth were having a long heart-to-heart about Byron Deitz, and it rattled all the windows in Tony Bock’s flat, briefly distracting Coker and Twyla Littlebasket from the very interesting story Tony Bock was, at that point, only halfway through.

  But the shock wave had faded into a distant rumble by the time it reached Charlie Danziger’s place, where he was sitting on his porch with a glass of Pinot Grigio and a loaded Winchester on his knees, half expecting either Byron Deitz or Boonie Hackendorff or maybe the devil himself to come wheeling up his driveway, guns a-blazing.

  The concussive wave drew people all over Niceville out onto their porches and lawns and balconies to stare up at Tallulah’s Wall, where the roaring fire on the face of the cliff had spooked a large flock of crows that lived there. The flock took flight, a huge black swarm, and headed west across the upper part of the city, their flight followed by almost every citizen in the town.

  The flock, later estimated at maybe three thousand birds, entered the airspace over Mauldar Field about ten minutes after Morgan Littlebasket’s plane, what was left of it, carrying Morgan Littlebasket, what was left of him, went cartwheeling down into the rocky base of the cliffs.

  The black mass of crows, moving in unison like a school of fish, banked to the south-southeast over Mauldar Field, a move that put the flock directly into the path of a Learjet that had just cleared the runway after a short delay caused by a crank call the tower had received a few minutes earlier from an unknown citizen.

  The jet, banking right and rising, reached the same height as the flock of crows, into the midst of which it flew at more than four hundred miles an hour. The twin jets sucked in enough crow meat and bone and blood to lock up the turbines and, since the windscreen was so smeared with crow blood and crow guts that neither of the pilots could see a damn thing, the plane entered into a death spiral so steep that not even the archangel Michael could have stopped the Learjet from doing what it did sixty-four seconds later, which was to augur fifty fe
et into the ground at a little more than four hundred miles an hour and turn Mr. Zachary Dak and everything else on board, including the cosmic Frisbee, into a volcanic fireball that exploded outwards all over the fourteenth green of the Anora Mercer Golf and Country Club.

  As the fireball and the molten shrapnel hurtled out in a 360-degree arc the explosion narrowly missed a slender reed of a man with red-rimmed eyes and a large bandage over a badly broken nose who was addressing a ball buried deep in a sand trap sixty yards away from the fourteenth green, but, sadly, in a strange quirk of fate, the fireball caught and utterly incinerated his beloved wife, Inge, who was standing in the dead center of the fourteenth green, holding the flag and bellowing at him, in tones of brass, For Christ’s sake, Thad, will you just hit the goddam—

  The fireball then shrank to a towering pillar of black smoke with a flaming core. Now the flock of crows, decimated but still a coherent mass, gathered together again, seeming to turn into a single solid entity, dense, cold, black, impenetrable, as curved as a scythe.

  This shape swooped low over the rooftops and church spires and forested blocks of Niceville, darkening the town as it passed. Then it rose up, soaring into the blue, wheeled suddenly to the northwest, and flew back to the crest of Tallulah’s Wall, where it settled into the ring of ancient trees that grew around Crater Sink, the birds clustering there in fluttering ranks, strung along the ancient branches, chittering and squawking, yellow eyes shining, sharp beaks clacking like scissors, staring down into Crater Sink.

  And there they stayed, for an unnaturally long time, until well after sundown, motionless and strangely silent, two thousand crows watching the perfect circle of cold black water with a fixed intensity, as if they were all waiting for something, finally, to come back out of Crater Sink.

  Acknowledgments

  All my gratitude goes to my agent, Barney Karpfinger; my guardian angel, Cathy Jaque; and my editor, Carole Baron, all of whom made a good book infinitely better; and to Danielle Adair, Emily Stroud, Tom Macdonald, Susan Hodgins, Suzanne Hutchinson, Debbie Fowler, Barbara Wojdat, and Lisa Hong, all of whom know why.