Rusty Nail

by J. A. Konrath

  When I joined the police force out of college, Mom hugged me and told me how proud she was, and then begged me to quit. She was my role model. I wanted to be like her, and didn’t understand why she regretted me following in her footsteps.

  Now I understood. It took twenty years, but I understood. I did a lot of good things, helped a lot of people. Saved lives. Caught criminals. Made the world a better place.

  A better place for everyone but me.

  I had a husband. I could have had a family, and pursued some other career that didn’t involve death.

  Funny thing about regrets. I don’t lament what I’ve done, but rather, what I didn’t do.

  And now, with my partner hurt, my job in trouble, my love life nonexistent, and my mother in a coma, I couldn’t help but wonder if I should have listened to Mom and not have become a cop.

  Would I be happy?

  I considered the melancholy I felt when I thought I was going to die in the fire. I’d faced death, and met it with apathy.

  That spoke volumes.

  I arrived at the Indiana Women’s Prison a few minutes before nine. From the outside it looked like an old schoolhouse, a two-story building made of reddish brown brick, with a circular driveway and well-tended green landscaping. The assistant superintendent met me inside, a thin reed of a woman named Patricia Pedersen. She had severe black eyebrows that looked like caterpillars and the barest hint of a mustache above thin lips. Her pantsuit matched the mustache.

  “Lieutenant Daniels, welcome to our facility. We’ll need to check your weapon, of course.”

  My .38 was locked away, and Ms. Pedersen had me sign in before leading me inside. I knew a little something about the prison. It was the first all-female penal institution in America, having opened in the 1870s. High-medium security, dorm living rather than individual cells.

  “We’re currently over capacity, with 388 inmates. Most of the latest are juvenile offenders. We just received an eighth grader who beat her mother to death with a baseball bat. Tried as an adult and sent here. Thirteen years old.”

  The hall we walked down didn’t have any doors—just concrete blocks painted gray and a white tile floor that met Ms. Pedersen’s square-heeled shoes with a horselike clip-clop.

  “Tell me about Lorna.”

  “Admitted twelve years ago. She cut off another woman’s breasts. Lots of trouble, for the first few years. Fighting. Attacking guards. Starting fires. She’s settled down some recently, since turning sixty. Still a strong woman, though. Don’t underestimate her.”

  “Any visitors lately?”

  “I don’t think so. I can check the records.”

  “If you could.”

  She led me through some heavy steel doors and into the first dormitory. It resembled a military barracks, beds alternating with metal lockers. All were empty.

  “Breakfast just began in the mess hall. We’ll catch her as she’s coming out. Need a private room, or can you talk in the yard?”

  “A room.”

  “I can move some chairs into isolation, post a guard on the door for you.”

  “If you could take her there first.”

  “Of course. You can wait in my office.”

  “Can I read her file?”

  “I’ve already pulled it for you.”

  Ms. Pedersen took me through more locked doors, another lonely hall, and into a small room with a cluttered desk. An American flag hung limply on a pole in the corner, and a signed picture of a former president adorned the wall. I sat in a wooden chair, the red vinyl cushion cracked and hard.

  She brought me the Lorna Hunt Ellison file, and I gave it a quick go-through. Lorna had been born in Indiana, sixty-two years prior. She’d been arrested over a dozen times, mostly violent offenses, and previously served a two-year stint in Rockville Correctional Facility for setting fire to a liquor store.

  That was the litmus test for blue-collar crime: liquor store burning.

  A psych eval spun a story of antisocial personality disorder, passive-aggressive disorder, impulse disorder, and sadistic tendencies. A recent update added bipolar to the diagnosis. Lorna took a daily cocktail of antipsychotic medication, the dosage high enough to cause stupor in a gorilla. Her IQ was in no danger of reaching the triple digits.

  Hardly any mention of her son, Caleb, and no mention at all of Bud Kork.

  I wondered if the Feebies were wrong, and Lorna had nothing to do with Kork. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  Ms. Pedersen came back and told me Lorna was ready. “She’s not in a pleasant mood this morning. Just warning you.”

  “Did you check her visitor list?”

  “Yes. Not a single visitor since her incarceration.”

  “Popular lady. Do you think I might grab a bagel or something? I left early and missed breakfast.”

  “Sure. Let’s swing by the mess.”

  I wasn’t really hungry. I wanted Lorna to stew for a while.

  We went through the kitchen entrance, and I had two slices of toast with butter while standing next to two women who were peeling an impossibly large pile of potatoes. They didn’t talk to me, I didn’t talk to them.

  Ms. Pedersen remained silent during my meal; not hurried, but not noticeably pleased to have to watch me eat. After a good ten minutes had passed, I asked to be taken to Lorna.

  The isolation area was clean, brightly lit. The doors were solid metal, with a sliding panel covering the eyehole slot. A male guard with a pot belly sat outside the door.

  “Half an hour long enough?” Ms. Pedersen asked.

  I nodded. “It should be.”

  “I promised Lorna extra dessert if she cooperates with you. Years ago, she stabbed another inmate with a fork to get her cobbler.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We’ve heard about the corpses at the Kork house, of course. Terrible.”

  “Does Lorna know about it?”

  “Everyone knows about it. See you in a half.”

  Ms. Pedersen walked off, her footsteps echoing after her.

  The guard stood up and offered a lazy smile. “If she gets frisky, just pound on the door or yell or something. Then I’ll come in and save you.”

  Save me? I figured it would have taken me all of four seconds to blind him, break both of his knees, and leave him singing castrato. But since he had the key, I kept that to myself. He opened the cell door.

  The smell hit me first, the pungent reek of old body odor. I crinkled my nose and stepped inside. The door clanged shut behind me.

  The room was small, perhaps fifteen feet by fifteen, with stark white walls and harsh fluorescent lighting recessed into the ceiling. A stainless steel toilet jutted from the corner, next to a one-valve sink that resembled a drinking fountain.

  Lorna Hunt Ellison sat in a lightweight plastic chair, facing me. Her hair was white and Einstein wild, like she’d just French-kissed an electric outlet. Her face looked worn, eroded, but the eyes sparkled like oily blue marbles.

  She wore jeans, perhaps a size sixteen, her belly hanging over the waistband. Her shirt was light blue, big enough to be a painter’s smock. Armpit stains spread down her sides, past her ribs, her small breasts hidden in the folds of the fabric.

  “Good morning, Lorna. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Pig.” Her voice came out cracked and squeaky. A witch’s voice.

  I sat in the second chair, facing her, our knees almost touching. Lorna scooted her chair backward.

  “Got nothing to say to you, pig.”

  Charm to match her beauty.

  “I just saw Bud. He says hello.”

  She hocked up something from deep in her lungs and spat it onto the floor. “He’s not saying dick. He’s unconscious.”

  “That’s what the papers say. The truth is, he’s talking up a storm. He’s telling us all kinds of things. Things about you. About your victims.”

  Lorna squinted, her oily eyes focusing.

  “I didn’t kill none of those folks. You can’t pro
ve nothing.”

  I kept quiet. We both knew she had a hand in the killings. But that wasn’t why I came.

  The silence stretched. Lorna scratched an armpit and left her hand tucked beneath it. She broke first.

  “What’s your name, pig?”

  “Lieutenant Daniels. And if you call me a pig again, Grandma, I’m going to grab you by your chicken neck and make you lick the toilet clean.”

  Lorna cackled, her eyes crinkling in amusement. “Daniels! I know you! You the one that got little Charles.”

  “You did a good job raising that one. He was a real piece of work.”

  “Charles was already ruined, ’fore I moved in. Bud thought he was the devil hisself.”

  “Is that what you thought?”

  She shrugged. “Boy had some problems.”

  Which might have been the understatement of the century.

  “How about your boy? Caleb? Did he have problems?”

  “Caleb was a good boy. Listened to his mama.”

  “Where’s Caleb now?”

  She didn’t answer, but her eyes stayed on mine. I didn’t see any intelligence there, but I saw cunning. Animal cunning, as if I were staring at a snake, or a rat.

  “Did you once have red hair?” I asked.

  “No. Used to be brown. Been white since my forties.”

  “So Caleb got his red hair from his father?”

  “Damn Irish deadbeat. Wasn’t worth his weight in shit.”

  “Where’s his father now?”

  She smiled, like a naughty child caught in a lie. “Caleb didn’t like his daddy much.”

  “Are you telling me Caleb killed his father?”

  “I’m not telling you nothing . . .” Her lips were about to form the word pig, but she read my expression and instead said, “Lieutenant.”

  “Were you married to his father?”

  “Up until his untimely death.”

  “Caleb keep in touch with you?”

  “Writes me, sometimes.”

  “Do you still have his letters?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Would you like to show them to me?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  Lorna folded her flabby arms. She had an unhealthy-looking brown growth on her elbow.

  “I’ve talked to Ms. Pedersen. She’s authorized me to give you certain things if you cooperate.”

  “She thinks I’m going to give up my son for some extra pie? She can kiss my hairy hole.”

  A real charmer, this woman. She should send in her application to Who Wants to Marry a Psycho-Bitch?

  “When did you and Caleb move in with Bud?”

  Another hack. Another spit. “Years ago. When Caleb started the junior high.”

  “Did Caleb get along with Charles?”

  “Caleb got along with everyone. Such a good boy.”

  “For a good boy, he seems to get in trouble a lot.”

  “He’s misunderstood.”

  “I’m sure he is. Plus, look at the hand he was dealt. Growing up in a house full of psychotic perverts.”

  Lorna didn’t like to be called names. I watched her hands form into fists. I kept up the heat.

  “You think that’s why he hates you? Because you’re a fat, psychotic pervert?”

  “Watch what you say, cop.”

  “I’d hate my mother too, if she was retarded gutter trash.”

  “I ain’t trash.”

  “Have you looked in a mirror the last couple of years?”

  “And I ain’t no retard.”

  “I read your file, Lorna. And if you were able to read, you’d see the word used several times.”

  Lorna seemed too focused on the older insults to process the newer ones.

  “I ain’t no retard, and my boy don’t hate me. He loves his mama.”

  I leaned in closer, fighting the stench. “Why hasn’t he ever visited you?”

  Lorna’s face twisted. “He’s been busy.”

  “Busy every day for the last twelve years? Isn’t that how long you’ve been here, Lorna?”

  “He sends me letters.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “He does.”

  “Show me.”

  “You want me to show you? Then you gotta do something for me.”

  I waited.

  “I want to see Bud.”

  “No.”

  “I want to see his beautiful face again.”

  “I’m sure you’ll share the same cauldron in hell.”

  I stood up, headed for the door. I needed some fresh air, and I knew Lorna wasn’t going to give me anything else.

  “You don’t want Caleb’s letters?”

  “I don’t care about his letters. I want to know where he is.”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me. But I do know something, might interest you.”

  “All I’m interested in, Lorna, is getting away from you.”

  I pounded on the door.

  “Let me see my Bud again, and I’ll show you something.”

  The door opened. I’d had enough of Lorna for the rest of my life.

  “I know where more bodies are buried.”

  That stopped me.

  “What did you say?”

  “If you let me see Bud, I’ll take you to more bodies.” She smiled, showing me tiny sharp teeth. “Lots more.”

  CHAPTER 31

  MS. PEDERSEN WAS painfully clear on prisoners’ rights to privacy.

  “They have none. They’re prisoners.”

  So Lorna Hunt Ellison stayed in isolation, and we raided her footlocker. We found some stinky clothes, a collection of empty candy wrappers, a faded Polaroid of a younger Bud standing in front of his ancient pickup truck, and two letters from Caleb.

  I donned a single latex glove and appropriated the picture and the letters. They had no return address on the labels. The postmarks came from Detroit. The first relayed, in some of the worst handwriting ever, that Caleb was sorry he hadn’t written before, because he was busy, but he’d write more often from now on. It was dated eight years ago.

  Apparently he’d lied, because the second letter was dated three months ago. According to the chicken scratches, Caleb’s PO had made him get a job and he was working at a car wash, but wouldn’t for very much longer because he was planning on killing the fat prick who ran it.

  That didn’t make sense. I checked with Detroit PD, and according to them, Caleb Ellison didn’t currently have a parole officer. So was Caleb lying to his mother? Or did he recently do time under another name? And how could I find that out?

  I put thoughts of Caleb on the back burner, threw the letters and the pic into a paper bag that Ms. Pedersen supplied, then used her office phone to call the Indianapolis PD. I talked myself up the chain of command, and eventually got a captain on the other end, a gruff-voiced woman named Carol Mintz.

  “Talk fast, I’m busy.”

  “You’re following the story in Gary?”

  “The whole state is.”

  “I’m here at IWP, and just had a heart-to-heart with Lorna Hunt Ellison, who was Bud Kork’s common-law wife. They lived together for more than a decade. She claims to know where more victims are buried, but there’s a catch. She wants to visit Bud.”

  “That’s doable. The catch will be keeping the media out. I’m surprised they aren’t camped outside the prison.”

  “I don’t think they know the link yet.”

  “You want a piece of this?”

  “No. But I’m in bed with the Feds on this one, and they’ll be in touch.”

  “Great.” She said it like an expletive.

  Ms. Pedersen showed me out, and we exchanged good-byes and I consulted the MapQuest directions I’d printed earlier, which would supposedly lead me from Randolph Street to Kellum Drive and the address of Mike Mayer, who supposedly rented the Titanium Pearl Eclipse supposedly seen fleeing Diane Kork’s house.

  MapQuest did me proud. I went west on Washington Street, merged onto the
expressway, merged off the expressway, and wound up in a pleasant little housing development filled with two-bedroom ranches on green-lawned quarter-acre lots. I parked in Mayer’s driveway and knocked on an aluminum front door.

  No answer. Not too surprising, considering Mayer just rented a car in Chicago.

  I had a few options. I could break into the house, breaking the law in the process. I could call Captain Mintz back, explain the situation, have the IPD obtain a warrant, and die of old age waiting to be allowed entrance. Or I could assume that in a nice neighborhood like this, Mayer had nice neighbors.

  I chose the house on the right first, traversing the well-maintained lawn and knocking on their aluminum door. A young girl answered, maybe ten or eleven, long brown hair and a face full of freckles.

  “Is your mom or dad home?”

  She nodded, eyes big, and then belted out, “Mom!” with all the force of a foghorn.

  Mom looked like an older, pudgier version of the little girl, with just as many freckles.

  I showed her my badge, hoping she didn’t look close enough to notice I was from out of state.

  “Ma’am, my name is Lieutenant Daniels. Your name is?”

  “Linda. Linda Primmer.”

  “Linda, can you tell me the last time you saw your neighbor Mike Mayer?”

  Her forehead crinkled in thought. “Been two or three weeks, it seems. Is Mike okay?”

  “We’re not sure. Tell me a little about Mike.”

  “Single. Keeps to himself. Kind of a loner. Seems nice enough.”

  Which was the exact description all neighbors gave of the serial killer living next door.

  “Is this Mike Mayer?”

  I showed her the Identikit photocopy.

  “That sort of looks like him.”

  “This may sound unorthodox, but we’re worried Mike might be in some kind of trouble. Did he ever give you a spare key to his house? In case he locked himself out, or to water his plants while on vacation?”

  “No. But he did lock himself out once, last year. He came over here to call the locksmith. The locksmith sold both of us a key rock.”

  “A key rock?”

  Linda stepped past me and onto her front stoop. Next to the door was a holly bush, surrounded by stones. She squatted and picked up a four-inch stone and showed it to me.