Blood Brother

by J. A. Kerley

  “Is this Sheriff Reamy?”

  “Not if you’re selling something, it ain’t.”

  “This is Detective Harry Nautilus in Mobile. It may seem odd, but I’m trying to locate Officer Jim Day, need to talk to him.”

  “The subject?”

  “A killing over twenty years ago. Earl Ridgecliff.”

  “If there’d be anyone to ask, I guess it’d be Jim Day. The case weighed down a corner of his desk for a long time. He had a thing about it.”

  “A thing?” Nautilus asked.

  “An interest. Probably just simple curiosity.”

  “Were you there as well, Sheriff? At the scene.”

  “Yep. Looked like people had been fighting with red paint and buckets of meat.”

  “Do you know where I might get in touch with Mr Day?”

  “No I don’t.” Reamy paused. “I’m not sure I’d want to.”

  Nautilus canted his head at a sound in a far corner of his head. A siren.

  “Can I run up and talk to you, sir?”

  Hollis Reamy, retired sheriff of Pickett County, Alabama, stepped to the porch. He pulled off a white hood, showing a wide, sun-browned face and intelligent gray eyes. His hair was more salt than pepper. Reamy patted sweat from his forehead with a red bandana and gave Nautilus the cop appraisal.

  “You’re a husky fella, ain’t you?”

  Nautilus tugged at the lapels of his orange jacket. “It’s interesting. I grew just big enough to fill my clothes.”

  “And right colorful ones they are, Detective. Gimme a moment and we’ll talk about Jim Day.”

  Reamy set aside the beekeeper’s hood and hive-smoker he’d been carrying, resembling a coffeepot drizzling smoke from its spout. He yanked off gloves and jammed them in his back pocket. Pulled off a sweatshirt. He wore a starched white shirt and red suspenders braced his khaki pants. Nautilus looked into the side yard and saw the hives, a dozen white boxes, the surrounding air alive with black dots. He hoped the dots would return to the task of making honey. Reamy nodded to a pair of wicker chairs in the corner.

  “Drag them chairs into the shade while I fetch something cool to drink.”

  Reamy disappeared inside the home, a beige modular with green shutters on several acres in the heart of farmland. The acreage was studded with water oaks, pecans and towering longleaf pines, cones the size of shoes at their bases. Reamy was back a minute later with two glasses of sweet tea.

  “Some folks like Red Diamond tea,” Reamy said. “But I prefer Luzianne. I sweeten it with two parts white sugar, one part turbinado sugar, one part honey. I balance it off with a little mint and lemon.”

  Nautilus took a sip and pronounced it delicious. Reamy nodded appreciation and sat his chair in reverse, arms crossed over the backrest.

  “So the gist is you’re trying to find Jim Day’s personal take on the killing of Earl Ridgecliff all them years back?”

  “My partner thinks it might be important.”

  “And he’s way up in New York?”

  “Yes.”

  Reamy sighed and stood. “Let’s take a drive, Detective.”

  They drove out the main highway, turned on to a tight road bordered by piney woods. Reamy swerved from the road and drove through three hundred feet of woods, branches squealing against his pickup. He stopped in a quarter-acre clearing surrounded by arrow-straight pines. The two men exited, walking a carpet of pine needles.

  “This is where it happened?” Nautilus said.

  “I remember it clear as yesterday. A guy out hunting squirrels found the body, what there was of it. Hadn’t been dead more’n three hours, what the coroner figured.” Reamy raised an eyebrow. “The guy that found the body? He never went hunting again, said it got ruint for him.”

  Reamy’s boots crunched over a deadfall. He paused and surveyed the scene. “Day was closest and got here first. Probably here ten minutes ’fore I arrived. We both parked on the road, afraid of messing up potential evidence, tire tracks, whatnot. I came down a deer trail yonder.”

  He nodded to a dirt path tracing through underbrush.

  “The path’s soft with needles and Day didn’t hear me coming. He was standing in the middle of all that human wreckage, not moving, like he was hypnotized. When he heard me, he snapped out of it and waved. It was a strange moment, but Jim Day was strange. Then the rest of the crew showed up, the Staties, the Medical Examiner and so forth.”

  “Day wrote the official report, not you.”

  “Because he had an eye for detail and a dictionary vocabulary. He took the photos that day, went through twenty packs of film. Shot every bit of meat, every organ, every possible angle. He climbed that tree over there to get pictures from above. Couldn’t get enough pictures.”

  “How much involvement did your department have with the case?”

  “Interviewing the locals, mainly. The State Police and ABI did the heavy lifting. But Day always kept them bloody pictures up on his desk like the case was his alone. Kept the full stack of reports, too. All the updates. One day, about a year after the killing, he put them away like the case had been magically solved, though that was still eight years away.”

  “You never had an inkling who did it?”

  “The Ridgecliff kid was never a suspect. A skinny, smart-brained and good-looking young fella who never spoke much. When the truth came out you could have dropped me with a feather.”

  “When we spoke yesterday, you gave the impression of not caring much for Day.”

  Reamy looked down, kicked a pine cone. “Seemed like a super choice when he got hired, the best scores ever seen from a recruit. But he never quite fit in, a loner when it came down to things, I guess.”

  “I know a lot of guys who go their own way. Good cops.”

  Reamy followed the cone a few feet, punted it into the trees. “Once I asked him to clean the gear in the ordnance cabinet. I was working third shift, about three a.m., and come in from a patrol. Day was cleaning the pieces when I passed by, didn’t know anyone was there. He had maybe twenty weapons disassembled, rifles, handguns, shotguns, specialty weapons, all laying on newspaper on the floor around him …” Reamy pulled off his cap, scratched his forehead.

  “And?” Nautilus prompted.

  “I’m pretty sure he had an erection.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I never asked him to clean the ordnance again. But like I said, he did what he was asked and got it done. No one disliked him, no one liked him. He was here three years and when he left, the whole place seemed happier somehow.”

  They climbed back in the car. “Could you drive by the house where the Ridgecliffs lived?” Nautilus asked. “If it’s not out of the way.”

  “Ain’t far. I got nothing else to do but play with my bees.”

  They drove three miles down the road, the air rippling with heat as though the land were a thin crust atop a raging furnace. Reamy turned a corner, pointed.

  “That’s the one. Looks pretty much the same, abandoned out here all by itself.”

  They drove by the white two-story farmhouse, windows boarded over, one side of the porch swing still dangling on its chain. Nautilus’s head replayed stories of occurrences within the house and he held his breath as they went by, like a kid passing a graveyard and afraid of inhaling ghosts.

  THIRTY-TWO

  “You were right,” Waltz said. He’d called and we’d met in a subway station near the precinct house. A train swept to the platform, wheels squealing.

  “About what?” I yelled.

  Waltz waited until the train pulled away. “Ridgecliff. The uproar at the Portuguese Embassy was threatening to ramp into a major brouhaha, so the NYPD put out the word that we were looking for a Portuguese businessman, but no relationship to the Embassy. All a mistake.”

  “I saw the clarification.”

  “Anyway, a rental agent, Jessica Stambliss, was visiting family upstate, When she heard, she ran to her nearest precinct, all whipped up. Turns out she ha
d leased a place to a Mr Caldiera, a Portuguese businessman.”

  A train swept to the opposite side of the station. “What happened?”

  “We got to the leased condo, a sublet. Empty. It’s staked out now, but he’s gone.”

  Relief washed over my body.

  Waltz said, “There was fresh food in the fridge, take-out entrées from a four-star restaurant. A chocolate cake, too. Covered with cherries and nuts, like a sundae. There was torn duct tape beside a bed. And an empty roll. How’s he moving her?”

  I’d given it a lot of thought. He was using his special ability.

  “All he needs is a schizophrenic driver, Shelly. He can convince the guy of anything. Maybe he enlisted a psychotic with a taxi.”

  “Jesus. He’s got a thousand potential accomplices.”

  Waltz’s phone rang. He took the call, shaking his head. He closed the phone and muttered a curse.

  “Gotta go.”

  “Something with Folger?”

  “The Pelham problem. Another damned doll just showed up.”

  “How many does that make?”

  “Four.”

  “How many in a set?”

  “It’s all over the board. Some have a dozen. Five or six is typical.”

  I thought a moment. “Can you take someone along who knows the things? Got any Russian cops in the precinct?”

  Waltz frowned. “Not at the station. Wait, there’s a guy fills the pop and candy machines, Alex something or other. I can probably get hold of him.”

  I accompanied Waltz to Pelham’s headquarters, knowing her nibs would be happy to hear a friendly accent. Especially given the phalanx of screaming anti-Pelhammers across the street from her HQ. Waltz figured the two of us could handle the doll gig, get back to our little problem with my brother.

  Sarah Wensley was in her usual position in front of the table with the brown box, the doll nestled inside, face up. I’d seen the first doll, but not the two recent additions. They had gotten smaller and the doll I was looking at was four inches tall.

  Waltz peered into the box. “It’s from the same series or whatever as the other. Mouth’s gone.”

  Pelham wandered into the room, waving at a departing news crew.

  “I’m thinking when we get to the last doll, it’ll have one of those party snakes in it, y’know. The ones on a spring?”

  Wensley shivered. “I’m not opening it.”

  Waltz had his gloves on. Shook the doll. “Sounds empty, like the others.”

  One of Pelham’s Secret Service handlers pushed through the door, looked at Waltz.

  “There’s a guy out front says he’s a consultant to the NYPD. He’s a bit odd.”

  “Fat? Got a thick Slav accent?” Shelly asked.

  The agent nodded. “And pockets full of candy bars.”

  “Send him back.”

  Alex Borskov entered the room like a liberator, handing out chocolate bars. I figured he was real popular with kids. Pelham smiled, took a Snickers. When his pockets were empty, Borskov grinned.

  “Am understanding I am come here to consultate?”

  Waltz said, “These people have been receiving some dolls, Mr Borskov. They’ve gotten four, starting with one six inches tall, now they’re down to this …”

  Borskov eyed the doll, his face breaking into a wide grin.

  “I KNOW THEM WELL! Every Russian know them well. They are matryoshka dolls.”

  I tried the name. “Matra-matree …”

  “Matryoshka! The word comes from the name Matryona.”

  “Does that mean something special?” Waltz asked.

  Borskov pumped his hands over his chest to indicate large breasts. “Matryona is by tradition a buxom, earthy peasant woman – the mother.”

  “The dolls are especially symbolic of mothers?” I asked.

  “Many kinds of nesting dolls. Hundreds. Matryoshka is only one for symbol of perfect mother-woman. Strong lady, Matryona. Very powerful.”

  “They’re more than funny dolls,” I said to Waltz. “They’re matriarchal symbols. Womanhood symbols. And who’s the most powerful woman in the country right now?”

  We both looked at Pelham.

  Waltz dispatched the doll to Forensics for more useless testing, then pulled me into the men’s room, locked the door.

  “Your brother hates women, kills them. He likes symbols and strange little pranks like those damn dolls. We’ve got to give the Secret Service a heads-up. If we tell them he’s a danger to Pelham they’ll put full Secret Service resources into the hunt. We could use them.”

  “You want to doom Folger?”

  Someone tried the door. I yelled “Occupied!”

  “What if your goddamn brother kills a presidential candidate and it comes out we knew the possibility in advance?”

  “It’s not him, Shelly.”

  “That’s from your new assessment, right? Where you’re assuming he’s not on a spree, he’s on a mission or something.”

  “It why Vangie brought him here. Sirius, remember?”

  “It’s a theory! What if she didn’t? What if she was …mixed up or something?”

  He’d given me my leverage. “You knew Vangie best, Shelly. It’s your call.”

  He closed his eyes and turned to the wall, slowly tapping his forehead against the white-painted brick. “They’re just a few damned empty dolls, right? A joke by some sorry geek. Still, I’m gonna make sure the SS boys have every photographic permutation we made of Ridgecliff. There’s no way even your brother could get past both the NYPD and the Secret Service.”

  Waltz headed to the station to see if he could pour surreptitious sand into the gears of the Folger investigation until I could get us ahead of my brother. I bought some Chinese take-out and went back to my bunker for more research, rolling out another meter of white paper.

  My phone went off. When I saw Harry’s number on the screen, I figured he’d tell me one of two things: either he’d found Officer Day’s number for me to call, or he’d been unable to find the man.

  I hadn’t considered that Harry would tell an eerie story about Jim Day.

  “Day was real interested in my father’s death?” I asked.

  “Obsessive, to hear Reamy tell it, keeping the photos on his desk, the reports.”

  “It just stopped one day?” I asked.

  “A year or so later. Not long after, Day resigned. Grabbed his letter of reference and blew town, Reamy thought.”

  “About the time Jeremy headed to college,” I noted, not sure if it meant anything.

  “From getting aroused by guns to keeping the scene photos on his desk, Day smells a little off to me. I booked a room at a local motel so I can hit the county courthouse tomorrow, try for the three snapshots.”

  When Harry and I needed an immediate scan of someone, we tried to find people who knew the subject in childhood, youth, and adulthood. Three fast views: snapshots.

  “You’re the best, Harry. I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

  “Won’t stop me from trying. Get some sleep, Carson. You sound half-past dead.”

  I turned on the TV for background, saw live coverage of Cynthia Pelham campaigning near Central Park, the cops cordoning off several hundred protestors. The camera panned the anti-Pelham crowd: angry faces, fists in the air, bibles being quoted, epithets hurled.

  I’d never seen so many adult faces that looked like angry children. I thought I noticed Blankley in the crowd waving his idiotic logo; it figured. I turned off the hatred and fell into bed drifting into a restless sleep haunted by mouthless dolls.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Harry Nautilus arrived at the Pickens County courthouse forty-five minutes before it opened. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the door. Lights were off, the halls empty. He sat on the steps to review his notes. The door opened at his back.

  “You here for the view?”

  He turned to a woman pushing – or maybe pulling – seventy years of age, her dress a rage
of color, her too-black hair stiffly coiffed and geometrically perfect, her blue eyes alert with curiosity.

  “I’m here to look at some records. It’s an official visit of sorts.”

  He pulled his badge wallet, held it up. She lifted neck-strung reading glasses and leaned close to study the ID. Nautilus could smell her perfume, something at odds with her age.

  She looked up from the ID. “Mobile? Aren’t you a little out of your jurisdiction, Detective Nautilus?”

  “Actually, ma’am, I’m working on a case in New York City. It’s a long story.”

  “I’d imagine.” She gathered him inside with the crook of a finger and he followed her down the hall, almost jogging to keep up with her clicking high heels. “You’re in luck, Detective Nautilus,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m Loretta Quint. I own this here place.”

  “Ma’am?”

  She led him into a windowed room filled with file cabinets and empty desks, the records division.

  “Been working here since I was twenty-seven. That was back when a computer was a man who ciphered numbers in his head and typewriters were powered by fingers. I know where everything is, and if I don’t know, it’s only because I’m pretending not to know. You get my drift?”

  Nautilus grinned. “Indeed, ma’am. You are the most gorgeous woman I ever laid eyes on. I live to breath in the air you breathe out.”

  She laughed, more percussive than melodic. “I already like you better than three of my five husbands. You tell me what you want to see, and I’ll point where to go. How’s that work for you?”

  Under the supervision of Quint, Nautilus accomplished his mission in forty minutes, racing through a round-robin of files, copying pertinent information, cross-checking, and finding more than he’d hoped, leaving with a notepad of names, addresses and numbers.

  The regular clerical staff, a dozen women between thirty and sixty – a collection of some of the plainest and most drably dressed women Nautilus had ever seen – were arriving at their desks as Ms Quint escorted him to the door of the courthouse. She held his arm tight and leaned against him as if suddenly frail. He feared his requests had worn her out.