A Garden of Vipers

by Jack Kerley

  “Howdy, Cade. Join us for lunch.”

  Barlow pointed down the road. “The dump’s a mile thataway. Take your fuckin’ picnic there.”

  Harry made a point of scoping out the house, the bike. “Nice digs, Cade. Cool ride, too. What’s a scoot like that cost, twenty-five grand? Thirty?”

  Cade strode off the stoop, walked to us, his eyes dark with anger.

  “Get off my property.”

  Harry held the drum at Barlow like a microphone.

  “Where’s the material from the Holtkamp case, Cade? Remember her, the teacher got killed on your watch? You didn’t tell us the case materials got mislaid.”

  “Don’t remember you asking. I want you off my driveway. I got nothing to say to you.”

  Harry fished around in the bucket, pulled out a biscuit.

  “You implied the state cops had all the materials. They have bupkus. Where’d it go?”

  “How the hell would I know? For all I know, it got picked up by a maintenance crew, tossed in the trash.”

  Harry studied his biscuit like he was deciding something. He came up with a packet of honey, squirted it over the biscuit. He started to take a bite, paused, looked at Barlow.

  “We talked to Pettigrew, Cade. In person.”

  I saw Barlow freeze. But a split second later he was smirking.

  “Pettigrew ain’t been around here in four years. He ran off to Montgomery to be a big shot. What’s he know about anything?”

  Harry took a bite of biscuit and chewed with his eyes closed. He smiled, like the honey had been the answer.

  “You saying you don’t know jack shit about the Holtkamp murder? Never went near the evidence?”

  “You fuckers are big-time crazy. That’s my answer.”

  “Say it again,” Harry challenged.

  “Glad to: You’re crazy.”

  Harry made a show of looking at me and raising an eyebrow, like he was weighing something. I looked back, nodded, like I’d come to the same conclusion. Harry turned to Barlow and applauded.

  “Chill out, Cade, m’man. Have a piece of chicken. You earned it.”

  Barlow looked at Harry like my partner had lapsed into Gaelic.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Like they say on TV, this has been a test. You passed.”

  “Make sense, dammit.”

  Harry said, “We were sent here to make sure the past stays buried.”

  Barlow’s eyes narrowed at the word past.

  “I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Which, as I said, is the right answer. And the right answer just won you a little something for your silence. A bonus for passing the test.”

  Harry pulled an envelope from his pocket, flipped it to Barlow. The county cop trapped the package against his chest. His fingers danced over what was probably a familiar rectangular shape inside the envelope.

  “Where’d this come from?” Barlow said, squeezing the package.

  I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket, fished out my own envelope. “Is a picture worth a thousand words? Or is it a photo?”

  I slid the photo from the envelope, shooting a final glance at Claypool’s computer handiwork as I passed it over: Harry and me at Bellingrath Gardens, between us a manipulated photo of Crandell. We were all grinning. Shadows weren’t exact, and Claypool had blurred everything a notch to help conceal the problems, but for a one-shot roll of the dice, it was damn good.

  I passed it to Barlow. He looked down and froze, his eyes wide.

  “You mean you guys know Cran—”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Barlow knew it one second too late, eyes trained to spot forged registrations and licenses, finding the photographic discrepancies. He threw the photo to the ground. Kicked it away.

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “You think we’re stupid?” Harry said. “You just said the name.”

  Sweat beaded on Barlow’s forehead. His left eye ticked and he swallowed hard.

  “You’re running a game on me.”

  “Crandell who?” Harry asked. “Crandell what? Crandell where?”

  “I never saw him before.”

  “Am I going to have to get my chalk, Barlow?” Harry said. “Make you a free space?”

  “What?”

  “Why’d you mess with Pettigrew’s investigation?” Harry shot.

  I said, “What are you hiding?”

  “What’d you get paid?” Harry asked.

  Barlow’s eyes bounced between Harry and me like a rabbit between two wolves. He rubbed his palms down his thighs to dry them.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said. “State? Federal?”

  Harry stepped whisper-close, narrowed his eyes. “We’re just two cops who have you figured out, Cade. And when we get to the bottom of what’s going on, your ass is mulch. Want to talk about it?”

  “Get out of here.” Barlow’s voice quivered. “Now.”

  Harry shot me a look. We’d done all we could. I grabbed the chicken from the hood, Harry headed back to the driver’s side. He turned, looked at Barlow.

  “We heard you used to be a good cop.” Harry flipped one of his cards to the ground. “Call me when you make the right decision, Cade. When you remember what side you represent.”

  We drove away. When I turned, Barlow was as still as a statue, torn envelope in his hand, white paper the size of money fluttering at his ankles.

  We needed time to make sense of all we’d seen and heard in the past few hours. Then decide how to proceed. Flanagan’s was too public and distracting, my place too far, so we went to Harry’s. He poured the coal into Ellington’s “A Train.” The chair in Harry’s living room held a box of Rudolnick’s case histories, so he pulled a ladder-back chair from the dining room and set it backward, facing me on the couch. He was in lecture mode: I’d seen it at the Police Academy when he taught classes there.

  “There are a fair amount of cops like Pettigrew around, Carson. Bright and talented hotshots in quiet burgs. Some get press, nail someone from the FBI’s most-wanted list, take down a major pedophile, talk a jumper off a building in the glare of TV lights, that kind of thing. Pettigrew was first-rate, but probably never made any splash that would have carried to Montgomery. Why was he selected? What even got him noticed?”

  “I don’t know, but it sure seemed like he was plucked away just in time to keep him from the Holtkamp investigation, good cop or not.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence anymore,” Harry said. “Not on this case. I want to know exactly why Pettigrew flew the coop.”

  “Call him and ask.”

  Harry shook his head, not an option. “Pettigrew told us the outside details. I want inside details. Plus, I ain’t trusting anyone involved to tell us the truth. Not even Pettigrew.”

  “That leaves us high and dry. I couldn’t get that kind of political info from the MPD, much less Montgomery’s force.”

  Harry stared at me. It was uncomfortable.

  “You’ve been dating an investigative reporter for a year and don’t know how it’s done?”

  “I don’t know what you’re suggesting.”

  “We need a top-flight investigative type from the Montgomery area. A guy with deep connects on the political side, where everything happens.”

  “I don’t know anyone like that, Harry.”

  “You know someone who would.”

  “Dammit, Harry, I can’t call Dani and ask her to…”

  Harry went to the stereo and snapped off the speakers. The room filled with silence. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.

  “She messed you over. She knows it. She’ll have the guilts and be vulnerable. Use it, Carson. She goddamn owes you.”

  “You want me to call her? Just say…what? I’d like to come over, we need to talk?”

  Harry’s voice got quiet.

  “I’ve got a little experience in this area, bro. She wants to talk. She needs to talk. All you got to
do is aim what she talks about.”

  CHAPTER 30

  I stood in the center of Dani’s living room and held her in my arms, looking over her shoulder. I had never seen so many flowers in a room where there wasn’t a corpse. Explosive bouquets in vases. Crystal tubes holding lone roses. Sprawling vats of carnations. Kincannon seemed to have some kind of flower fixation. I enjoy the scent of flowers, but her house reeked with the damn things.

  I’d arrived five minutes earlier. We’d engaged in a tentative fashion, stilted Hellos and How you beens, broken sidelong glances, and finally, touching.

  The full embrace with failing words.

  Then, finding the words. The explanation.

  She leaned back, her eyes red and wet and swollen, blond hair matted to a damp cheek.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Buck just happened. Buck and I dated several months before I’d met you, stopped. Then he came by last month, just to float the notion about my becoming an anchor. It started out as dinner.”

  “But you fell into…old ways.”

  She looked away. “Yes.”

  “I was always working, Dani,” I said. “I wasn’t there for two months.”

  I admit distraction. I admit stupidity. I had taken our relationship for granted for weeks. But I also knew she only had to grab my hair and tell me her feelings, and I would have changed the situation.

  Or so I wanted to believe.

  I said, “Are you serious about him? Kincannon? Is this relationship everything you want?”

  Something changed. Her eyes turned to a dimension far away. She looked like she was stepping through a door with one chance to retreat before the door closed.

  “Yes…,” she said, the word hissing away.

  “Then everything will be for the best.”

  She put her hands on my chest. Agitation shivered through her face.

  “He’s very caring, Carson. He calls every hour at least. Look at all the flowers. He’s going to teach me to sail. I’ve never—”

  I felt a rush of anger. “You don’t have to sell him to me, Dani. I don’t like Buck Kincannon. And I’m not going to change.”

  She dropped her hands loose to her sides, stared at the scarlet carpet.

  “Of course.”

  She walked across the room. A realization came to her eyes.

  “This is the last time you’ll ever be here, in this room. In my house.”

  “Yep.”

  She turned away, dropped her face into her hands. “What have I done, what have I done…”

  I went to her, held her shoulders. She remained hunched over, tucked into herself.

  “What have I done…”

  “Dani? Are you sure you’re all right?”

  She spun, took my face in her hands. “Oh God, Carson, I’m so sorry. For my stupidity. For everything. If there’s anything I can do…”

  I pulled her close.

  Be careful around Buck Kincannon, I could have said. Watch yourself. Clair Peltier thinks they’re dangerous, unstable, unhappy people capable of…

  Instead, I put on a sad face and a bewildered voice and said, “I dunno, Dani, maybe there’s something on this you could help me with, just a name. It’d save me a week’s work….”

  I left Dani sprawled on her couch, sobbing. Inconsolable. In the last few minutes she had fallen into a world where her grief was within some private internal domain. I took one last look at Dani’s home, knew my hours there were over. I stepped outside and pulled the door shut.

  “Excuse me, who are you?” a voice said.

  I turned to face Buck Kincannon striding up the steps. In the drive was an automobile that looked fresh from a wind tunnel. His cologne moved in advance of his body, something light, almost feminine. Kincannon wore a gray linen suit, blue shirt, lavender tie with a small hard knot. Not a wrinkle anywhere. I wore a coffee-stained thrift-store jacket over faded jeans, and was too many miles from my morning shower.

  “I’m Carson Ryder.”

  Neither of us made a move toward shaking hands. He nodded, made a show of waggling his forefinger at me, a remembrance.

  “Right, I recognize you from the party. I liked the cowboy getup, something different, funny. You’re just leaving, right?”

  The last line he delivered double entendre, the slight smirk at the corner of his lips saying, You’re history, loser. The bright teeth sparkled with innocence. I made no answer as we moved past one another in the disengagement dance. I was walking away, he was moving toward the door.

  He paused, snapped his fingers.

  “You’re a detective, aren’t you? I’ve heard a few things about you.”

  He hit the word few, like I was a guy who stopped by every couple of weeks to mow the lawn.

  “Really?” I said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  He canted his head, grinned, raised an imperious eyebrow. It looked like a pose for a menswear catalogue.

  “From the news?” he presumed.

  “From Harry Nautilus.”

  Kincannon pursed his lips. Shook his head. “Sorry. The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  He dismissed me with his back. Started to knock on the door. I said, “You worked with Harry Nautilus on a project a few years back, a sports venture.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Bringing Tiger Woods to town for the Magnolia Open?”

  “Putting together the little ball field up in Pritchard. The one for the poor-as-dirt kids.”

  He froze before his knuckles knocked the door. Turned to face me. The glittering eyes had gone flat. I looked into frosted black marbles.

  “I’m afraid your friend must be mistaken. I don’t recall it.”

  I gave it a two-beat pause.

  “That’s strange, Buckie. Folks up there remember the incident. Which probably doesn’t bother you a lot because they’re poor. But I also hear the blue bloods of Mobile wouldn’t wipe their asses on a Kincannon. Enjoy your evening.”

  I winked and walked to my truck without looking back, feeling Kincannon’s mute, blind hatred every step of the way.

  It felt good.

  Twenty minutes after leaving Dani I sat on Harry’s gallery. Harry sat in the glider sipping a beer. He’d traded work garb for a tie-dyed tee heavy on the red, lavender shorts, size-14 leather sandals. He’d moved the red-frame sunglasses to the crown of his head.

  I reached in my pocket, pulled out a slip of paper.

  “Guy’s name is Ted Margolin,” I explained, passing the slip to Harry. “He’s local, with the Mobile Register. But he handles state politics, and that means Montgomery. Good and fast and connected, according to what I could get from Dani.”

  Sobbing as she wrote Margolin’s name and number. Apologizing again and again. Our yearlong relationship exploding around us and I’m lying to wrangle information.

  “Connected to the cops?” Harry asked. “The administration side, people with access to records?”

  “As much as any reporter could be, I guess. Dani says the guy’s almost sixty, worked the beat a long time.”

  “Who’s opening the lines of communication?”

  “Ms. D. said she’d call the guy tonight, pave the way.”

  If she could pull herself together. If she hadn’t told Kincannon my request, him saying, screw the cop, let him get his own information. Or maybe she’d already forgotten about it, busy romping with the Buckster in a house stinking of flowers.

  Harry said, “You tell her anything about what we’re—”

  “Just the fake story, Harry. She wasn’t really listening. I got the feeling her life’s a bit complicated.”

  “Complicated how, Carson? She’s keeping her toesies warm with…”

  I raised my hand like a stop sign and said, “Enough.” Buck Kincannon was history.

  For the moment.

  I declined Harry’s offer of supper and started for home. The moments with Dani ached in my belly, a physical pain, like being punched. Then I remembered a kind and generous offer t
hat had been made to me, and cut across town, heading west. It was nearing seven p.m., the shadows long, the air hazy and golden.

  Before her divorce two years back, Clair Peltier and her husband had lived in a piece of high-money real estate on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. It seemed more museum than home, centuries-old furniture, art on marble pedestals, glittering chandeliers. A gilded harp, for crying out loud.

  The lust for ownership had belonged to her husband, Zane Peltier. Clair preferred experiences to objects. Reading, cinema, the symphony, travel…all stirred her pot harder than a fancy car or an armoire by Louis the something or other. When divorce loomed, Clair found herself in the enviable position of having a husband with both money and a need to avoid news coverage. Today she lived in a small but elegant house on a woodsy acre in Spring Hill, the champagne section of town.

  Driving down her street, I saw Clair in her front yard. She was painting her mailbox, brush in hand, a small paint can at her feet. The methodology was pure Clair: dip brush, remove excess, carefully paint one square inch of mailbox, repeat.

  I pulled into her driveway, leaned out my window. “I didn’t know women in Spring Hill could paint anything but their nails.”

  “Don’t give up your day job for Second City, Ryder.”

  She finished another perfect square inch, set the brush on the can, walked to the truck. She wore jeans and white running shoes and a long-sleeved khaki shirt with tails nearly reaching her knees. A blue bandana held her hair back. After her divorce she’d gotten into yoga and health-type foods, getting lithe and limber and losing twenty pounds.

  “What brings you to my driveway, Ryder? You lost?”

  I slow-tapped my thumbs on the wheel. “Listen Clair, uh, you said that if I ever needed someone to talk to…”

  “Let me put away the paint, clean my hands—”

  “I didn’t mean now. But thank you.”

  She put her hand on my forearm, concern in her eyes. “If something’s bothering you, Ryder, please, let’s talk.”