Upon seeing my approach, Taggart reached behind him for my things on his lateral filing cabinet. He held them out to me as I entered the cubicle. “Find anything interesting?” I said.
“Not a thing,” he said. “You can count on one hand the number of these we search that don’t have porn on them.”
I said, “Is that what you were looking for?”
“When the warrant allows us to look,” said Ebbersole, “there is always a scan for downloaded child porn. Ancillary issue, but part of the protocol.”
“Ever plant any?” I said.
Ebbersole punched her tongue into her right cheek, let the slow burn that flooded her face subside, and when she spoke, it was arch. She announced, “We’re closing the case.”
“On Allison?” I said.
She said, “On the whole investigation.”
I asked, “Why?””
“No one left to apprehend,” she said. “No one left to prosecute.”
“It’s a heavily entrenched network,” I said. “It’s still out there. Still operating.”
“But,” she said, “it is no longer attached to an active homicide investigation.”
“Vice has it,” said Taggart. “Detail on trafficking will monitor the situation, ongoing.”
There was an uncomfortable-looking chair next to the filing cabinet behind Ebbersole. I pulled it over to the end of their work top and had a seat. Taggart stifled a chuckle, while Ebbersole looked as if I’d just taken a dog’s temperature in church. I said, “What about the bodies that were retrieved from the van?”
Ebbersole said, “How is any part of that information a modicum of your business?”
“Modicum,” I said. “Wow. Latin. Your school covered in ivy?”
“Newspapers covered the case pretty well,” said Taggart. “Figure you’d probably already have what information there is.”
I had not been back to my office yet. And my home laptop was, well, that’s why I was there.
“What information there is?” I repeated.
“Beyond recognition,” said Ebbersole.
“Two males and a female,” said Taggart, “all beyond identification.”
I said, “Then how can you close this case?”
“You’d prefer it just went cold,” said Ebbersole?
“You have not earned a modicum of the boost this is going to give you in your closed-case stats,” I said.
“Spell modicum,” said Ebbersole.
I rattled it off without hesitation and added, “From the Latin, the neutered form of modicus, meaning moderate, scant, the smallest particle. I take it you are conversant with small or scant.”
“There were no prints,” said Taggart, “no dental records, no DNA samples of record to which we could match anything.”
“Reznikov was a phantom to begin with,” said Ebbersole. “None of that would have helped identify him anyway.”
Taggart said, “Eye witness substantiation that the van was completely under Reznikov’s control allowed us to conclude it likely he went up in smoke.”
“Quite a presumption,” I said. “How convenient this won’t be going to trial.”
“That too,” said Ebbersole.
“Who are these eye witnesses?” I said.
“Among the individuals detained from the Sandpiper Motel,” she said, “and the enclave up off 1960. There were no survivors at the Bayou Urgent Care Clinic outside of you and Seldeen.”
“Seldeen saved my life,” I said.
“Officer Seldeen was a member of this department,” she said.
“Who you had written off as having gone rogue,” I said.
“Still,” she said, “credit will migrate to us.”
“Your closing of this case won’t actually close it,” I said.
“Really?” she said. “How so?”
“Because I’m still on it,” I said.
“Will there be anything else?” said Ebbersole.
I was on my feet, with my electronic equipment under my arm. “Just when I think it’s time to get the hell out of this business,” I said, “here comes a move like this and I get reinvigorated. Thank you, Sergeant. Best medicine I’ve had amidst all the medicine I have, in fact, had.”
She slowly applauded, looking not unlike a jaded chorine. Our prickly congress with one another was becoming welcomed entertainment for Taggart. I schlepped out of there as certain as I could be without confirmation that the female remains from the van had once been Rain.
The Sandpiper Motel was chained and locked and wrapped in crime scene tape. Of the individuals apprehended when the authorities decided to raid the place, Rain was not among them.
I had been shrill fodder for tabloid coverage of the case. Houston being a hub in the undertow of trafficking, there was no shortage of fresh, headline-making sensation arising from every Ward. Child sexual molestation often led the news cycles. Indeed, the under-aged sex slaves of both genders who had been arrested out of the Sandpiper raid were caught in that nebulous judicial limbo hanging between designation as criminal before victim.
The seedy enclave of mobile homes and RVs on blocks up behind the razor wire in the 1960 corridor was also closed down, chained, and locked. Much of such conspicuous impoundment fortification was good for news photo opportunities. Nobody believed such installations would remain idle long. Like roiling fire ant nests, disturb one and drones simply moved the queen to a new location and life went on with barely an interruption.
Likely, there was a brand new, customized van, serving as a floating headquarters in plain view, sailing the downtown streets and avenues, as yet undiscovered; thus, reinvigorating a thriving business after a honeymoon interlude.
The Bayou Urgent Care installation had been abandoned. The building was for sale, a commercial realtor’s sign planted in the ground near the curb. The parking lot had quickly become a convenient outdoor showroom for used vehicles up for private sale. Signs taped inside windows extolled perfect mechanical condition, with an asking price, followed by solicitation of a best offer. Some of the vehicles appeared worn and tired; others new enough to suppose their owners were under water debt-wise. One stand-out vehicle was the Cadillac I had followed early on in my pursuit of Reznikov. There was no contact information which drew me to it for a closer look. The doors were open and the key was in the ignition. Whatever auto-hysteria alarm system that would have announced such a status must have been disabled. No personal items or registration documents were in it. The vehicle was not for sale; it was available for theft. It was set up to disappear. No point in pursuing it further. It presented as a dead end, and a waste of the energy I was trying to restore in myself.
Reznikov may have been swept aside, but he was still out there, still culpable, still the elephant in whatever figurative room I found myself in. I had to stay focused on him, and I expected a long and lonely end game. For whatever reason he had bestowed his story on me made me perhaps one of if not the last individual who could verify that he existed, now, or ever. It was a strange and tenuous thing to hold onto, but my instinct told me it had once meant a great deal to him and could still mean something, if he were still alive. In his nomad existence as a man without a country, I was a marker, a reference, a tether to the prospect that he had actually occupied space among us. Like the astronaut adrift in space certain to die out there, it was a fervent hope that the body might be retrieved and interred beneath the soil that had once sustained him…or her. My desire that solitude fill the balance of my life, I suspected, was something quite different than non-existence, or the consignment to oblivion he might yet need to assuage.
Seldeen’s widow tried to make contact via telephone voice messages, and through Taggart as a reluctant go-between. He had contacted me, I presumed, unbeknownst to Ebbersole. “She’s up in Spring,” he said, “disposing of the house and what few effects Officer Seldeen left.”
It made sense to me that Seldeen would not have acted to cut her out of the estate they once had shared as
joint partners. His children would need financial support. Too, he had seemed so shell-shocked in the wake of her abandonment, I doubted he’d gotten around to seeing a lawyer to make any changes in titles and deeds, or the designations in his will. “I really don’t want any contact with her,” I said. “If all is in order and it’s just a matter of her taking possession of everything she had left behind, I’d have nothing to say.”
“I think she’d like to know what his end days were like,” said Taggart.
“Tell her to use her imagination,” I said, “and to presume the worst in terms of emotional devastation.”
“Ouch,” said Taggart.
“I couldn’t look her in the eye,” I said. “I’m not sure I could even be civil.”
“Should I tell her that?” he said.
“I don’t care,” I said. “Sure. Tell her.”
I got myself back to work. As I was not up to strength physically, I sold my services to sub-contract assignments in the abundant medical investigations field. Lots of sitting in the car and taking photos of thieves who were the recipients of high dollar physical injury settlements. Business was brisk in revealing those who showed up in neck braces and wheelchairs in the courtroom, and subsequently revealed themselves to be quite robust on golf courses and tennis courts.
Thirty
Two months later Reed Thomas slithered into town. That’s when I first noticed him in my wake anyway. He might have arrived earlier, but given his clumsy attempt to remain inconspicuous on my tail, I was pretty sure he was newly arrived.
I resolved that I would let him make his move. His ineptitude was not bad for sport on the road, as I not once tried to out-run him, though I did change lanes and my speed frequently. Had I kept it up, the poor fellow would have needed a neck brace of his own and a new set of brakes. I suspected that eventually his presence would bring some news or information about Adrienne and Grace. I had been blessed by only intermittent thoughts of them and did not rush to acquire what he might have to report.
I capitalized on his shadowing me to drive by Adrienne’s house in Hyde Park. It was the first and only time I had driven by. The new owners, a couple with two young children, were already making changes. The house had been repainted and there was something different about the landscaping. Another crepe myrtle?
The mind being heir to what it does best, filling a void, one of the thoughts I had was that Adrienne had taken Grace and had departed from Falls Church, Virginia without a clue, leaving Reed Thomas to obsess about where they might have gone; back to Houston being his most accessible and actionable hope. Two months in and the man was not yet able to let go.
I had known such feeling in my time. It took effort to maintain the charade that I was not aware of his following me. Another individual, another circumstance, I’d hop out of my Chrysler in stalled traffic and confront him as he sat trapped behind the wheel. What stopped me? It was not the first time, but it had been a long time since I had operated from a continuing desire not to know.
The last time I saw Thomas was at Memorial Park, where I had slowly gotten back to my running regimen. I could complete the loop, twice even, but not with anywhere near my previous pace. As I headed along the outward leg, through the arcade of Loblolly Pine, with the golf course on my left, I caught sight of him leaning against the side of his rental car in the brutal sunlight, his not having had the good sense of a native to park in the shade. He strode across the grass to intercept me on the path. I stopped for him. “I’d just as soon not know,” I said.
“She would have stayed with me,” he said. “But she said she had fallen in love.”
“I’d just as soon not hear,” I said.
“I thought she must have come back to Houston,” he said. “Back to you.”
“I’d just as soon not talk about this,”” I said.
They’re gone,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it.”
“I’d just as soon not think about this,” I said.
He said, “I have no one.”
I finally looked him in the eye and said, “I don’t care.”
He said, “At least she’s not here with you.”
“You could have called,” I said. “I would have told you that.”
He said, “I needed to see it for myself.”
“And,” I said, “are you now convinced?”
His voice caught in his throat as he gasped, “Yes.”
I said, “Then we’re done.” I began to run again.
He called after me, “She would have stayed!”
I turned and ran backwards for several strides. “Glad I was able to help her with that,” I said. I turned again and picked up the pace, grateful for the very easy lifting it was to cease thinking about Reed Thomas all together.
Life’s routine inured to a new normal. Gone was any sense of obligation to accommodate the vicissitudes of others, and work took on an invigorated precision borne of ease and the privilege of unfettered immersion, which was not to say obsession. Error? Sure, plenty of that. Doubt? Little to none. I monitored downtown traffic for telltale signs of business conducted on the virtue of constant movement, with the finesse of vectored interactions, executed while never coming to a full stop. It involved a new perception of destination that favored relay over arrival. Depth of field gained territory; that which was merely landscape receded. It continued to be a way of seeing even after intention had clarified itself with the realization that this was not going to lead me to what I wanted.
Reznikov.
After my residency as a renal patient in the hospital, I had become conversant with the growing subculture arising out of the advent of Infusion Centers, bricks and mortar installations devoted to the needs of those requiring addition, recirculation, or extraction of fluids─dialysis being one of the featured protocols. Such operations were run with uber-efficient scheduling. The procedures were time intensive; thus, every effort was made to eliminate unnecessary wait-times before patients got connected to machines. Still, long term familiarity with fellow pilgrims on that journey turned waiting areas into visiting centers, where social interaction was the norm before and after the purpose for being there had been completed.
I made myself visible in the mix. No one ever grew savvy to the fact that my name was never called, nor that I was ever seen to venture into the secured inner sanctums of actual dialysis rooms. I met a lot of nice people who occupied high and low positions on waiting lists for transplantation. I became adept at homing in on those with means who also had reason for desperation. More than one such individual shared with me that his/her doctor had indicated that it was time a kidney be obtained in any way one could be gotten.
Hello, Organ Brokers.
Not long in to my insinuation into this particular field of play, I noted two individuals who, like me, were not there to receive the life-extending services of a dialysis machine. One was a slender woman with graying hair, who dressed upscale casual in concert with the prospective clients she mingled with and tried to recruit. She was smooth and, I imagined, successful, after observing her greet others warmly and engage them in easy conversation. As was repeated in several interactions, her business card eventually made it into the clients’ hands, and she closed with a heartfelt grasp of upper arm, or a pat on the shoulder.
The other individual was the creep I had much earlier on witnessed behind the wheel of the Cadillac, and then stepping up into Reznikov’s trolling van. He noticed me take note of him, finally placed me, and cut short an exchange he was having with a recruitee in order to make a swift exit. I followed just as quickly. He turned and watched me come out of the building after him, and decided to defend his ground there on the front walk near the curb. “What do you want?” he shouted from a distance.
“A word,” I said, and continued my approach.
“I’m in a hurry,” he said, as he tried to keep space between us.
I said, “This won’t take long.” We were now toe to toe.
“Are you follow
ing me?” he said.
“Why would you think that?” I said.
“I’ve seen you before,” he said.
“Where?” I said.
“I’m trying to think,” he said, though I was sure he knew.
“I’ll make it easy for you,” I said. “I saw you park your car downtown and then hop up into Reznikov’s moving van. I later stopped the van by standing in front of it, and you hopped down out of it and ran like a schoolboy chased by a bully.”
He blurted, “I did no such thing!”
“Where’s Reznikov?” I said.
“Who’s Reznikov?” he said. I slapped him hard with my right hand. “I don’t know,” he said. I back-handed him with the same hand. He put his own hand up to his mouth and shrank away. He spit after having tasted blood. “Gone,” he said. “Disappeared. Dead.”
I said, “How do you know he’s dead?”
“The Russians killed him,” he said.
I said, “And how do you know that?”
“Everybody knows it,” he said.
I said, “Who’s everybody?”
“People,” he said. “Just some people.”
“Who do you answer to?” I said.
He said, “No one.” I made a move toward him and he nearly tripped as he backed up quickly, turned, and ran, not toward a vehicle in the parking lot, but down the sidewalk alongside swiftly moving traffic out in the street. He kept looking back to see if I were following him. When he was assured that I was not, he stopped running but kept walking, and kept turning back to make sure I was still not following him. I saw no point in going after him. He was nobody. He didn’t know anything. He could only lead to more nothing.
I let time and the universe do its job on the whereabouts of Reznikov. I picked up the pieces of my life others had left in tatters by leaving, dying, or by getting themselves incinerated. Like the parent of a large family whose eldest child had gone off the rails and was now beyond all hope, purpose came in knowing there were other children to yet raise. Summer lasted its usual six months.
Spare Parts: A Ted Mitchell Detective Novel (Ted Mitchell Detective Novels Book 4) Page 22