by J. A. Kerley
Zane looked me straight in the eyes for the first time. “He wanted to be a horticulturalist.”
I stared at Zane as if he’d spoken in Swahili.
“Horticulturist? You mean like … “
“Plants, Detective Ryder. Trees. Flowers. I have part ownership in a large landscaping-supply business. The sergeant wanted to be a horticulturalist, the position guaranteed until he wished to retire. He was adamant.” Zane looked at me and shrugged.
“Did he ever mention Captain Squill?” I was still trying to figure out horticulturalist.
Zane’s eyes dropped. “I can’t recall.”
“What about the fire at the NewsBeat?”
“The sergeant was concerned they’d have a record of me responding to Mr. Nelson. Something the investigation might uncover. I have no idea if he set the fire.”
“If it went public Burlew’s hold turned to vapor,” I said. “But you checked the paper out yourself.”
“I drove by a couple times, just to look, think.”
Driving up I’d seen the back of the Jag in the five-bay garage. Zane started weeping. Clair sat beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. But her eyes remained on the dark clouds out the window.
“Somehow I figured this was where the action was,” said a voice from the doorway. Burlew strode into the room. Clair stood angrily. Harry stared from the piano bench. I spun to Burlew, fists clenched.
“Oh, come on, Ryder,” Burlew said. “Grow up.”
“Sergeant, I want you out of my house this minute,” Clair said.
Burlew blinked his infant eyes and turned to Zane. “There’s no problem here, Mr. Peltier. None.”
Zane said, “No problem? I’m about to become a laughingstock, and you’re about to go to jail.”
“I don’t remember a thing,” Burlew said slowly.
“You were blackmailing me with “
“I don’t remember a thing,” Burlew said. “Good words to know, Mr. Peltier.”
I saw it coming. Zane’s nostrils started twitching as though smelling fresh air from an unexpected source. “What are you talking about, Sergeant?”
“Unless you press charges against… whoever, there’s no trial. No trial, no negative publicity. No pictures entered into evidence for the world to see.” Burlew smiled, a tiny red bow. “You know my favorite? The one I call Duckwalk, where you’re “
“Out of my house, Sergeant,” Clair demanded. “This instant.”
Harry leaned back and rested his elbows on the instrument’s keyboard. A low bass note sounded. Harry smiled softly as he watched Burlew, then turned to me. “I ever tell you about a partner I had once, Cars? Back, oh, a dozen years or so?”
Burlew reddened. “Fuck you, Nautilus.”
Harry stared calmly at Burlew. “You’d best giddy-up, Burl,” Harry said. “Yee-hah, ride ‘em cowboy.”
Burlew eyes widened to almost normal size and he turned apple red. He started to say something, but stopped. He spun, reteating on legs as stiff as fence posts. When we heard Burlew’s engine fire up, Zane stood and shot his cuffs, consternation creeping over his face.
“Who was that fellow?” he said to no one in particular. “What on earth was he talking about?”
Clair looked at her husband as if she was going to vomit, and strode from the room. Harry tapped my arm and craned his head in a follow-me motion. We walked a dozen feet and stopped, heads together. He said, “So does this have to do with our case what I think it does?”
“Right,” I affirmed. “Absolutely nothing. It’s a complete sidetrack.”
Harry shook his head, cursed Burlew under his breath, and left. I retrieved the photos and quietly slipped to the door. Clair intercepted me in the foyer.
“Whatever’s involved in this,” she said, “I want it pursued like any normal case.”
“There is no case, Clair. It hinged on Zane’s testimony against Burlew. There’s no other evidence against Burlew except Terri Losidor, and she’s riding his bus.”
Clair’s laugh was humorless, metallic. “Zane won’t talk.
He’s in there contriving some pathetic story to make me pity him.” She gently touched my arm. “Following this led you down the wrong path, didn’t it?”
“We were looking for an elusive someone with close ties to Nelson. We thought it might lead us to the killer, not “
“To my husband.”
I shrugged.
She shook her head. “Does it put you back at square one?”
“We’re also investigating the idea that the bodies are messengers, ava tars It’s what we were looking at when we got … sidetracked.”
Clair walked outside and I followed. Mobile was eight miles across the Bay. It was raining there, sky and city connected by a curtain of gray. We walked a flagstone path through waves of azaleas and arbors of roses. “Much of this is my fault, Carson,” she said, stopping beneath a trellis. “My own damn, ridiculous, stupid fault.” The scent of the flowers hung in the air, counterpoint to her bitter-spoken words.
“I can’t see that, Clair.”
She looked out over the cloud-gray water. “I knew Zane was a weak man before I married him. I even suspected his bisexuality, rumors, though it’s probably closer to asexuality. But he was the ne plus ultra of what girls with my upbringing were supposed to treasure and trap, Ryder: he owned wealth, position, influence … “
“Clair, you don’t have to “
Her blue eyes aimed at me, and I fell silent.
“Zane sold himself as a step into that world, the one of inherited ownership and influence, instant history, and I presented myself as a unique material acquisition. You see, Zane, like most others in his world, did nothing for what he has but open his eyes. I struggled years for technical expertise, professional accomplishment. All I lacked was a stage on which to let others see how far I had come.”
“You’re respected across the country, Clair. Beyond.”
She smiled sadly. “Vanity is a cleft that widens as it’s filled, Ryder. Professionally, I stood on my own, but I didn’t stand apart; I’m one of many talented and regarded people. But not in Zane’s world. There, I was an anomaly: a self-made woman in a world of glittering bubble heads whose accomplishments mirrored Zane’s, inherited, purchased, or married into. But how did I get to where I could stand beside them to tower above them?”
Her eyes told me I had to fill in the blank.
“Married Zane Peltier,” I said.
She laughed without mirth. “A wicked piper, vanity. I walked down thinking I was stepping up.”
Across the Bay the veil of rain over Mobile turned golden on its trailing edge, the sun burning through. Clair pondered it a moment. “My introspection is recent, Ryder, occurring only since you came to me about Dr. Davanelle, Ava. After you left, I realized my first response was not, “How can I help?” but rather, “I can’t allow a potential blot on my record.” It was despicable thinking; I’m a self-centered fool.”
I shook my head. “I think you’ve set a measure mark two inches above your head so you’ll never reach it, Clair. It screws up priorities.”
Clair reached to the trellis and cradled a pink rose. “Zane’s act of weakness, his submission to Burlew, has sickened me past all tolerance. Not at Zane, at me.” She nodded toward the house. “This was never my place, my life, this monstrous overwhelming of things. All I’ve ever truly loved was my work, my ability to ” She paused and clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white.
“Damn. Here I am doing it again, Ryder, the world of me. My life. My things. My job.” She turned away to dab at her eyes with a wrist. “How’s Ava? Is she going to make it? Tell me she’s fine, even if she’s not.”
“Clair, I think she’s “
Clair put her finger to my lips before I could finish. Her perfume spun my head. Or maybe it was the roses.
“Just for today, tell me she’s fine. Tell me she’s going to make it.”
She lifted her finger. I said, “S
he’ll make it, Clair.”
Clair smiled brightly, an extraordinary act of will. “Without a doubt. She’s young, she’s strong. She’ll be wonderful. Everything’s going to be fine. The world is diamonds and roses, Ryder. No, screw the diamonds, they’re just dirt with an attitude. The world is roses.”
Her smile broke like white glass and she fell toward me. I held her and she wept softly, more breath than tears. I felt the warmth of her lips brush my cheek. Then she stood back, wiped damp eyes on her sleeve, and pushed me toward my car.
“Things to do, dear,” was all she said.
I watched her straighten her back, set her mouth, and stride into that cavernous house. I knew it signaled the trip I’d been avoiding. Our case had just rocketed into a wall and now it was my turn to straighten, set, and stride. Though I’d called the number perhaps six times in my life, I pulled the phone from my pocket and dialed Vangie like the number was branded across my soul.
CHAPTER 26
The night, muted breezes and a pearl-white crescent of moon, would be beautiful if I were anywhere but here. But above these grounds the glowing moon, like the stars, was incongruous. This was a place beyond beauty, a land where even the shadows were shadowed and light was irony. Driving the mile from the road to the gate, my hands gripped the steering wheel so hard they cramped. Shaking them out I remembered I had been here four times and each time I lied and told myself it would be the last.
The gate guard took my name and checked his clipboard against my ID while his flashlight stayed on my face. I wasn’t offended; it’s the way things are done here, no room for error. I parked in the lot and went to the door, where another guard treated me as if the guard at the perimeter was only a warm-up. I entered amid a burring of locks and clanging of doors.
Though it was late, Vangie was there. She knew my mood and we didn’t converse beyond pleasantries. A guard arrived to escort me to Jeremy’s room. I told him unless I specifically called for him, he was not to open the door or the slat window. I’d requested the camera monitoring his room be turned off and Vangie had reluctantly agreed. The guard looked at her with skeptical eyes.
“He knows what he’s doing,” she said.
“He better,” the guard replied.
We walked a long white hall with several solid steel doors, slatted, the slats closed. A siren started down the hall, rising in pitch. I thought it a fire alarm until I realized it was a human scream, though I couldn’t fathom what hellish vision could inspire such a sound. The scream lingered in the air as if trapped between molecules, then disappeared into another dimension. I saw the guard studying me with a strange, exultant smile and I realized he was energized by working where anguish and horror were the norm. I wanted to punch his grinning mouth, to see his head snap backward as spit and blood trailed a comet pattern down the wall.
It’s this place, I told myself. Stay calm.
We stopped at a door. “I’ll be right outside,” the guard said. He slid the slat aside and peered inside before sliding a plastic key into the electronic lock. The door hissed open.
I entered.
If anything, it resembled a dorm room: built-in drawers, an open closet, a long table that served as a desk, chair beneath it, another chair in a corner, and a futon-style bed. The furniture was made of soft plastic. There was a bookcase, full and neat. A sink and toilet and shower stall recessed into a wall. The full-length mirror was Mylar. Its reflections were skewed, like viewing yourself in mercury.
Jeremy sat on the bed with a green book in his hands. Slight and fair, with yellow-blue eyes and cornsilk hair, he lacked my father’s powerful build, but had his coloration. Jeremy wore gray sweats and white socks under institutional slippers. He glanced up as if this was our nightly routine. I leaned against the wall with my arms crossed.
He tapped the book. “Ever read Lucretius, Carson?” “Not since my sophomore year, I’d guess.” “Oh? Which sophomore year? Just kidding. Here’s one of my very favorites: “For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold as terror and imagine will come true.””
He wrinkled his brow, perplexed. “But my question is, who should fear when the trembling children are correct, Carson?”
I looked at my watch. “I’d like to start back by ” His voice dropped an octave. “Who should fear, Carson, when the trembling children are correct?” “It’s been a long day, Jeremy.”
“WHO SHOULD FEAR, CARSON? IT AIN’T BRAIN SURGERY!”
Though he suckled from emotion, I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice. “The parents, Jeremy. How’s that? Question and answer. Call and response. Sound and echo. Are you done?”
He canted his head as if hearing faint music in the distance. “Is Mother all right?”
I sighed. Always the game.
“I asked if Mother was all right. She’s fine isn’t she?”
“She’s dead, Jeremy. She’s been dead for three years.”
He raised a curious eyebrow. “Oh? A pity. Was there much pain?”
“Yes, Jeremy, there was pain.”
White pain, black pain. Pain that scorched her small hands into iron knobs and she turned almost transparent before its snow-white fire. She never touched a pill nor, until the end and she could not resist, allowed me to do anything for her. She needed to go through hell just in case there was a heaven.
“Enough pain for three?” he asked. “I’m not including you in this list, of course. You escaped the flames. Oh, maybe you were a bit inconvenienced, a bit neuroticized, but your soul didn’t get burned. You were saved from the flames. Did your soul get burned, Carson?”
“You know, Jeremy, we could have handled this by mail: Question. Did your soul get burned? Please circle Yes or No.”
“DON’T YOU DARE MOCK ME! YOU NEED ME, I DON’T NEED YOU! I’ll try again: Did your soul get burned, Carson?”
I yanked the chair from beneath the table and sat eye-to-eye in front of him. “No, Jeremy, it did not.”
“How unusual, given the flames that seemed to be everywhere. Why?”
“You tell me, Jeremy. You seem to have little else to think about.”
Jeremy leapt up his bed, screaming and pig-squealing. “BECAUSE I KILLED THE BASTARD, THAT’S WHY! I wired that SQUEAL to the SQUEAL and I SQUEALED until his SQUEAL and his SQUEAL were pouring down his legs like tube worms and black honey. I stuck my face in his dripping SQUEAL while he was alive to watch. That’s why your soul didn’t turn to ashes, brother. I SAVED YOU!”
Jeremy jumped from the bed and paced the room, once, twice, then crouched before the mirror in a batter’s stance. He winked at me through the shifting image of the mylar.
“Maybe all of this could have been avoided if dear daddy had played ball with me instead.”
He lowered his voice and affected a perfect imitation of our father’s voice. “Hey, son, what say we go outside and throw the old pill around?
“Stop it, Jeremy.”
“No, son, that’s not the right way to grip a hat, hold it like this.”
“Stop it.”
“Dammit, boy, I said hold it like this.”
“Don’t.” I stood.
“Hold it, you little fucker!”
I jumped toward him. “Jeremy!”
“I’ll show you you little bastard I’ll fucking show you I’ll show you I’ll “
I grabbed his shirtfront. Jeremy threw back his head and a shriek from a corridor of long ago pierced the heart of today. My mother turns to me and says, Go to bed it will be quiet soon.
The door slat snapped open.
“Everything all right?” the guard asked. His eyes scanned the room to find Jeremy smiling calmly, me against the wall soaked in sweat.
I yelled, “Keep that window closed!”
The slat closed slowly and I went to the sink and splashed cold water over my face. Jeremy sat on his bed and smiled. “Now that we have the
opening ceremony out of the way, what do you want to talk about, Carson? Let me guess … the recent incidents in good oP Mobile? I knew you’d need a little advice when the answers wouldn’t come. Did you bring the photos and files for me to diddle over for a day or two? Oh, and a lighter?”
It was midnight when I crossed to Dauphin Island. A heavy storm approached from the south with low exhalations of thunder, lightning diffused through clouds. I hoped Ava was asleep, that I could drag myself to bed, tumble into the black I craved. When I turned the corner and saw Harry’s Volvo in my drive, I jammed on the brakes and stared at his car. What could he want at this hour? I felt my head listing and eased ahead and parked. It was difficult to walk up the steps, as though the space between them had doubled.
Harry and Ava were as still as marble. Harry was a statue in a chair; Ava a statue on the couch, a cup of tea poised between breasts and lips. Someone tossed hot paraffin over me as I moved through the doorway; the wax slowing my motions as it hardened.
“Why are you here tomorrow?” I asked the Ava statue, hearing the words twist out wrong, trying to remember what I had meant to say. I tried again and got, “I mean there Harry late …”
While I waited for my tongue to clear, the floor shivered, as though lightning had struck soundlessly at the foundation. It ignited the pilings because the far end of my house began to founder and sink. The pilings are failing, said a calm voice in my head. But why isn’t the furniture sliding down? I watched in fascination, my house had never done this before.
“Thar she blows,” I said.
I heard cold strands of harp music. The statues levitated from their seats and flitted to me like butterflies.
“Hold it just like that. Out a bit more. That’s it.”
Ava’s voice was on dry and failing recording tape, a constant hissing and crackling behind her voice.
“How bad is it?” I heard Harry say, recorded on the same tape.
“Second degree. Looks worse than it is. Infection’s the first concern.”
Sounds resolved. Another strike of thunder, distant and muffled. The hissing was hard rain on my roof. I opened my eyes, swimming from deep water toward surface sparkles. I tried to sit up but Harry’s hand blocked my chest. “Don’t move, bro,” he said. I felt stinging beneath my bicep. My shirt was off and I lay on the couch. Ava smoothed on a medicated cream that smelled like paint made from spoiled cabbage. Harry held my arm tight as I winced and jerked.