by Anne McAneny
The next shot, a close-up, showed Leroy staring daggers at the local preacher, jaw tensed, eyes narrowed into precisely aimed slits. With his head low and his pale brows casting a shadow on the bags beneath his eyes, a frightening portrait emerged. What had the preacher done to poor Leroy? Or was residual hatred for Daddy Fitzsimmons rearing its ugly head?
Sam Kowalczyk was no slouch in the photography department. He’d enlarged that particular photo and laminated it. If the case had ever come to court, Sam was ready to show the jury this likeness of Leroy. It would have circulated on newsstands nationwide and gone viral on the Internet, with only one headline possible for such a wanton image: GUILTY.
I thought back to the wartime photos Leroy had shown me. Seemed that from either side of the camera, the man’s dark impulses shined through.
“Something doesn’t add up,” I said. “Sam knew you were getting out of jail. He knew you would come see him and he’s not in good health. Since this file wasn’t hard to find . . .” I waited to see if Grady was getting it; he wasn’t. “Do you think Sam left it as . . . an offering? An act of contrition?”
“Too little, too late,” Grady mumbled. “All this time, we could have gotten justice for your mother. And who knows how many more victims there were over the years?”
“Yes, but . . . I think Sam wanted us to find it.”
Grady shrugged.
I looked toward the woods behind the house. Dense, murky, private. A perfect place to atone for sins. I stood up and glanced at the empty gun rack by the fireplace. “We need to find Sam.”
“With COPD, he couldn’t have gotten far.”
“I don’t think he wanted to get very far.”
CHAPTER 43
We came to a fork in the trail behind Sam’s cabin, one side looking unkempt and leading downhill, the other flat and worn. “Let’s head down,” I said. At Grady’s questioning look, I shrugged and added, “It’s where I would go . . . if I wanted to be alone.”
A pained look shot across Grady’s face. “Maybe we should call the police.”
“All we have to offer them is an empty cabin.”
“And a file on the Haiku Killer.”
“And we’re certainly giving them that. But let’s just—”
A bear reared up on its hind legs forty yards ahead of us. At least, I thought it was a bear. It made a racket scrambling to get out of sight before I could decipher its shape against the trickery of light and shadow in the woods.
“Was that what I thought it was?” Grady asked.
“If you thought bear, then I think so.”
The next sentence didn’t need saying. The bear had been investigating a mound partially covered in wet leaves. We headed toward the abandoned curiosity and laid eyes upon the body of a small man, no more than 140 pounds, a rifle at his side but no immediate evidence of a bullet wound.
“Sam?” Grady said, as if expecting him to answer.
Sam lay faceup, mouth and eyes open. He still wore his nasal cannulas, which seemed odd, since they wouldn’t have aided him on his final trek. Perhaps they’d become such a part of him, attached to his steady flow of oxygen in the house, that he’d forgotten they were there.
“He was so frail,” I said, “like just the thought of a bullet could have killed him.”
“There’s no blood,” Grady said. “I don’t mean to be crass, but with a gun that big, you’d think his only choice would be to shoot himself in the head while holding the gun from below.”
“Maybe the trek here was too much,” I said. “He could have passed out and died from exposure.”
Grady kicked at the dry leaves that had fallen atop the thicker, wet ones. “Looks like he’s been here awhile.”
“I’d say almost two days. Rigor mortis is lessening, and look at the pallor of his face.” Clumps of fly eggs bubbled out of his ears and filled his throat. At least his nostrils had been spared, due to the cannulas. A bit of detectable movement in his mouth meant life was thriving in there and maggots would emerge soon. I’d seen the sight many times and it always made me think the same thing: death was as ungracious as nature was relentless. I wanted to take his temperature, turn him over, check the lividity, and get the full story, but the medical examiner would have my head if I touched anything.
I leaned in closer as Grady took a step back. Although no one could claim to relish the stench of rotting human flesh, I’d been around enough that I could compensate. Mouth-breathing, ointments, sprays, and focusing with the other senses helped to block out olfactory input—at least psychologically—but today, I relied on a different tool: overwhelming curiosity.
Sam wore a heavy orange flannel, black Dickies pants in what looked to be a slim cut for boys, and heavy boots. No hat or sunglasses.
“Look at this.” I pointed for Grady’s sake, forgetting that he was probably looking anywhere but at his former friend’s body. “A small bruise on the side of his neck.” Luckily, the bruise had formed about half an inch above the dark, pooled blood at the base of his neck; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been visible. “He might have injected himself and hit a vein.”
“Then why the gun?” Grady said.
“To ward off bears?” The irony lay there like a bad joke, perhaps one Sam would have appreciated.
I checked the area for a syringe, brushing away fresh leaves and older, decaying ones, knowing the police would have my ass in a sling if they found out. Seemed the syringe should be lying near his hand, but he could have thrown it, if it existed. I crossed to his other side and repeated the search. Nothing. Either the police would find it or the lab guys would backpedal into the answer.
Grady stared at the bruise. “Same place Leroy injected me. It’s the last sensation I remember, that stinging jab out of nowhere.”
“Could Sam have been sending a message by killing himself this way? A confession that he’d held back on what he knew?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.” Grady sighed. “He enjoyed symbolism, along with his own sense of justice, or so I thought.”
“Wonder if he left a note.”
Unable to silence the bad angel in my head telling me to search Sam for a note, I picked up a twig and slid it beneath his damp flannel—careful not to puncture his bloating midsection. I lifted, hoping to catch a glimpse of a paper tucked inside. I checked both sides until my good angel—who only made cameos—insisted I stop. The urge to dig my hands into Sam’s pockets gnawed at me and I wondered what my mother would have done.
I tossed the stick, glared accusingly at my hands, then pulled out my cell to call the police. When I turned my back to the corpse to give Grady a moment alone with his friend, I saw it. Pinned to a skinny oak tree, protected by laminate similar to that covering the eerie photo of Leroy Fitzsimmons—a single piece of white paper with three lines of text. Seventeen syllables. A haiku.
CHAPTER 44
Nicholls stepped out of his car into a big puddle. He shook his foot, then his head, glaring at me like I’d personally dumped muddy water in his path. “You kidding me with this, Janie?” he said, shoving a handful of potato chips in his mouth. He’d just driven an unexpected two hours after being up all night working the Rocko Mania case, so his mood was understandable. “Gonna start a file on you, the way bodies keep appearing in your midst.”
He introduced himself to the officers stationed outside; then we entered Sam’s house together. Nicholls went straight for the bedroom. Every officer who had appeared so far, and there were over a dozen, had gravitated to that room immediately, as if they could smell the sick man living, eating, and wheezing in there—doing pretty much everything except dying.
Nicholls wiped his hands on his jacket and said hello to the local officers and chief. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, a beer-bellied, thick-lipped detective peppered Grady with questions, more interested in events from three decades ago than the fresh corpse in the w
oods, around which the medical examiner and forensic investigators were swarming for clues beneath a tent. By now, they’d have pulled stray fibers from his jacket—some of which would belong to a curious bear—scraped beneath his fingernails, sampled his palms for gunshot residue, and sealed the haiku in an airtight case more secure than the one holding the Declaration of Independence.
Nicholls returned to my side. “What a fuckin’ mess. How do we have every uniform in the state looking for Leroy Fitzsimmons, and he waltzes up here, drags this guy into the woods, and leaves him out for deer food?”
“Bear food,” I said, “but you bring up a good point. Why did Leroy go after Sam after all this time? I mean, Sam’s known Leroy was the killer for years.”
“Come on, Janie. Even I can figure that out based on what you told me about this guy.”
“I must be exhausted from doing your job, Nicholls. Please share.”
He shoved another wad of chips in his mouth—really, didn’t most people eat chips one at a time? His explanation came onion-scented. “On the one hand, Sam Kowalczyk was screwing his old buddy there”—he jerked a thumb at Grady—“taking money every month and pretending to be tracking down a killer. And maybe he really did for a while. That would explain all the files you told me about. But when Sam finally tracked down Leroy Fitzsimmons and determined he was the third guy, he decided he didn’t want to give up the monthly paycheck from Grady.”
“I agree. He let a serial killer go free for a few bucks.”
Nicholls licked the salt from his fingers. “Sex, money, and drugs. It always comes down to one. Plus, you gotta look at it from Sam’s point of view. Maybe he charged Leroy Fitzsimmons a monthly stipend, too, to keep quiet about the truth. That way, Sam’s got two sources of income. But it all came to a head this week because McLemore was gettin’ out of jail and Sam was gettin’ ready to keel over. Everybody knows that impending death makes a man wanna clear his conscience, so it was only a matter of time before Sam shouted out to the world who the real Haiku Killer was—and Leroy did not want that information going public.”
“I owe you a quarter, Nicholls. I think you’re right. And remind me to steer clear of your deathbed. I don’t want to hear whatever spills out of your conscience.”
He grinned and then looked around the scene again. “Who woulda thought a chubby redneck with a limp and an AARP card could outrun the entire Kingsley police force?”
Grady extricated himself from his fans and joined us. “Detective Nicholls,” he said, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
They shook hands, but Nicholls didn’t look swayed by Grady’s standard charms. “Lemme ask you, Mr. McLemore, what was so urgent you had to come up here and see Sam Kowalczyk today?”
Grady took a slow moment to assess Nicholls. I knew from experience that Nicholls was a hard guy to stare down or make flinch; Grady figured that out fast and answered, “Detective, I’ve waited a long time to get my hands on whoever was in Bridget’s house that night. I figured Sam might offer the quickest route to the guy, maybe even know where he was hiding out.”
“So Sam updated you regularly when you were inside?”
“Yes, but the trail ran cold the last decade or so.”
“Little did any of us know how hot it would get, eh?”
Grady looked unamused. “Sam’s work still has value. I’d appreciate seeing his files when the police are done with them.”
“You did pay for them, didn’t you?” said Nicholls, ignoring Grady’s request. Those files would go nowhere until the case was closed; even then, Grady might never see them. Which was why I’d taken photos of the contents while the police were en route.
Nicholls gestured for us to follow him toward the fireplace, out of earshot of the crowd. With all the commotion, some wily reporters could have sneaked in unnoticed. The three of us settled beneath the horns of a big buck and Nicholls spoke quietly. “You guys saw the haiku, right? What’d it say?”
“It was strange,” I said, “but then Grady explained it.”
Nicholls shot a cynical glance at Grady, expecting the man whose looks rivaled his own to be condescending, but Grady merely lowered his head, closed his eyes, and prepared to recite the haiku. He looked like a priest about to bless the wine and wafers.
“Horse sedative no
Only stallions merit such
Glutton juice for him.”
He opened his eyes but remained silent, a trick surely learned from his political days while waiting for applause to simmer, or in this case, for thoughts to percolate. Somehow, I doubted Nicholls used the time for reverential reflection on glutton juice.
“Well?” Nicholls blurted.
Grady adopted a conciliatory tone. “Forgive me if I’m telling you things you already know, Detective, but the drug I was injected with—”
“The one everyone thought you injected yourself,” interrupted Nicholls.
“Yes, exactly.”
Nicholls couldn’t help himself. He was so accustomed to dealing with pathological liars that it had become his natural tendency to throw off the rhythm of anyone he questioned.
“When I was arrested,” Grady continued, unfazed, “I was in shock, accused of everything from premeditated murder to involuntary manslaughter. The police took my statement at the scene, and at my insistence, took me to the hospital for blood testing.”
Nicholls grunted. Hard to tell if a chip had lodged in his throat or if he was mocking Grady. Either way, Grady paused and waited until Nicholls had his guttural reflexes back in order.
“The hospital couldn’t come up with anything solid, so the samples had to be sent to the state lab. It took over two weeks to get an answer, but the results of the drug test came back positive for—”
“Ketamine, right?” Nicholls said.
“No,” Grady said with a hint of condescension. “Ketamine was the drug erroneously reported to the general public during that two-week wait. I thought you’d be up on the file, Detective.”
Sometimes, it was fun to see Nicholls flapping in the wind.
“Got enough current homicides to keep me busy. No need to dig up ancient history.”
“This history may now be relevant. The police never revealed the actual drug in my system—not because they thought it would exonerate me, but because they wanted to weed out the crazies who might come in and confess.”
“Weren’t there like thirty of ’em?” Nicholls said.
“Thirty-six,” Grady said. “Thirty-six people who wanted to take credit for Bridget’s death. To them, it offered a path to notoriety.”
“Those damn cops, though, right?” Nicholls said, shoving gum in his mouth for dessert. “Always givin’ credit to the guy who wants it least.”
Grady acknowledged the slight with a small nod. He’d have doubters his whole life, and Nicholls was firmly planting his flag in the skeptics’ camp. No matter how you sliced it, Grady did pull the trigger, and Nicholls tended to be a black-and-white guy. You pulled the trigger or you didn’t. You killed someone or you didn’t. Grady had. But the situation felt awfully gray to me, especially here in the middle of the mountains, in a damp cabin with black clouds outside sinking closer to Sam Kowalczyk’s body—another mouth silenced to keep the secrets of a long-ago night.
“All these years later,” Grady said, “the tactic the police used has come full circle. You see, I was injected with azaperone.”
“A zap of what?” Nicholls said.
“Azaperone. A sedative used to calm pigs when they’re being moved.”
“So that’s the glutton juice the haiku mentions?”
“Yes. Ketamine is a horse tranquilizer. The haiku says only stallions merit ketamine.”
“And Fitzsimmons got you with pig juice.” Nicholls almost grinned. “Didn’t think you were a stallion, eh?”
“Apparently not,” Grady said. �
��It’s a direct reference to what he injected me with, versus what was reported in the papers. With today’s note, he’s boasting that he’s the real deal.”
Nicholls’s head tilted so much, it was almost sideways. “Just what was it between you and this guy? You stiff him on the office repairs or something?”
Grady let his head fall to the side until he and Nicholls looked like they were prepping for an awkward kiss. But Grady seemed to be using Nicholls’s eyes more as a mental whiteboard, looking through him and searching for an answer to an unasked question.
“I mean,” Nicholls said, righting himself, “this new haiku, along with murdering your buddy out there, it seems personal, angry. Like he has a vendetta against a guy who deserves only glutton juice.”
Grady still didn’t speak. Instead, he let himself collapse onto the fireside love seat. The great man looked defeated, a condition I hadn’t yet witnessed in our short time together. “What if you’re right?” he said, almost pleading with Nicholls and seeming ashamed in my presence. “What if Leroy Fitzsimmons was after me that night, or after Bridget because of me? I’d always assumed he was there to reclaim his haiku, but what if . . .”
Nicholls showed his usual self-control and maintained a hard, cynical silence. I, on the other hand, could barely tolerate the suggestion hanging in the air. “No, Grady. No way. You think Leroy somehow tricked my mother into taking the haiku, knowing she’d call you? That he was luring you to my mother’s house to kill you? Come on.”
Grady swallowed hard, raised his eyes from the cold fireplace. “Maybe not that elaborate, but what if I was supposed to be the next victim?”
“No,” I said, “it happened because my mother came across his haiku. It was all a mistake.”
“Maybe, but once he knew she had it, he saw an opportunity to enact his plan early. Maybe it wasn’t a random coincidence that he showed up at my door to offer his services.”
Nicholls and I glanced at each other, reaching the same warped conclusion simultaneously.