Cul-de-Sac

by David Martin

  “Yeah well …”

  The golfer came within a club’s length of Camel who pointedly checked his watch again.

  “I ain’t done with you or your girlfriend,” McCleany promised, holding the club head right in Camel’s face.

  Since Camel had moved slowly and painfully ever since being punched in the stomach McCleany was caught off guard when Camel’s hand snaked out so quickly, grabbing the club, yanking it away, turning it around to hold the club as you would a baseball bat, swinging for the golfer’s head.

  McCleany ducked. “Grip’s all wrong,” he told Camel as he raised the revolver … Camel swinging a second time, striking a forearm and knocking the .38 loose.

  “Never took a lesson in my life,” Camel said quietly. McCleany started to say something smart too but decided to leave without further comment when Camel picked up the .38.

  Camel didn’t follow. The security guards would be here soon, maybe not within two minutes, a time Camel had picked out of the air, but soon enough, and he didn’t want to be caught holding a revolver … he had enough to explain setting off a fire alarm in the office where a man had killed himself just last night.

  Something else he had to deal with too, the three bodies he found today and whatever loose ends went with them … a neighbor might’ve spotted him at the Raineys’ house, the manager of Norton’s apartment building can describe him, and Camel is going to look suspiciously like an accessory unless he can explain what he was doing at the crime scenes, tell someone in authority how he came to find those bodies. He knew a judge he could trust and decided that would be his next order of business … calling the judge.

  When Camel heard security coming he stashed the .38 and went out into the hall to meet them … three guys running, Jake Kempis in the lead.

  37

  “You lied to me,” she told Jake Kempis.

  “Mrs. Milton the state police have jurisdiction—”

  “No, I thought you were a nice man,” Annie said, starting to remove Kempis’s jacket, “but you’re not … you lied to me.”

  He said for Annie to go ahead and keep the jacket and she did but only because she had no alternative. Annie didn’t thank him.

  Parker Gray looked shattered when he opened the door to Kempis’s car. “Mrs. Milton I wonder if you could come with me please.”

  He’d been horrible to her during the questioning about Paul’s death and Annie didn’t want to go anywhere with him. “I was attacked,” she said without looking at Parker’s face.

  “Yes I know.” He extended a hand but Annie stepped from the car without his help. Gray leaned down and said, “Thanks Jake.”

  Annie leaned down too. “Yeah, thanks Jake.”

  “I’m sorry ma’am.”

  Parker Gray took her to his car. When she was seated in the front passenger side she asked if all this was still connected to Paul’s death.

  “All of what?”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, nothing like that.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I got a little of the story from Kempis, I need to hear it from you huh?”

  “I want to be taken to the Nefferings’ house, that’s where I was staying.”

  “You give me directions, I’ll drive you there.” But he made no move to start the car.

  “Let’s go then.”

  “Were you raped?”

  “No but—”

  “I could still take you to the hospital if you want.”

  “I’ve told you what I want, I want to go to the Nefferings’ house, I want a hot shower … is Teddy still in jail?”

  Gray started the engine and turned on the headlights but didn’t move the car. During the interrogation following Paul’s suicide, Gray offered lurid theories about Annie and Teddy, making Annie feel guiltier than she already did. He speculated that Teddy killed Paul, that Annie engineered the whole scenario to get rid of a husband and regain an old lover … Annie had been physically afraid of him as if any moment he might start slapping her around.

  But now he spoke to her in a soft voice. “What happened to you this afternoon Mrs. Milton?”

  Annie told him about going to Cul-De-Sac, finding the chest, finding papers about the organization Paul belonged to, Our Brothers’ Keepers, the group that apparently helped get Growler out of prison, finding pornographic photographs in the chest—

  Gray swung around so quickly that she flinched back against the door. “Where are those photographs right now?” he demanded.

  “Still in Paul’s workshop as far as I know.” She told Gray about Growler threatening her, his horrible tattoo, how she nailed his foot to the floor and even then barely escaped when he jumped into the back of her truck. “I don’t know if he’s dead or what, when I left he was lying in the road. Have you sent someone out to check on him?”

  Gray replied with a question of his own. “You’ve told me everything huh?”

  “Yes.” Everything except finding the elephant, which Annie wanted for herself because Paul had died to get it for her and in her mind that elephant had become Paul’s memorial … and also because it was worth three million dollars.

  Gray asked her again to tell him everything that had happened between her and Growler, what she found in that chest, everything … and Annie did, everything except the elephant. Gray listened without comment, seemingly distracted and saddened by something other than what Annie was saying. His dark suit was rumpled, a red tie loose at the neck, he needed a shave and a shower and sleep … he looked haggard in a soul-troubled way that reminded Annie of her mother in those days following the funeral of Annie’s father.

  Gray moved the shift lever to Drive but held his foot on the brake, reluctant to leave. “You sure you don’t want to be seen by a doctor huh?” he said after a long wait.

  “Except for this bump on my forehead I’m fine.”

  Another pause before he spoke. “I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”

  Annie thanked him.

  Gray took his foot off the brake pedal allowing the car to ease forward. Out on the road he continued at such a slow pace that drivers who managed to pass him did so with glares on their faces while the ones forced to pile up behind used their horns, their brights. Gray didn’t notice, his mind elsewhere … it was like he’d forgotten Annie was in the car.

  When he finally spoke he acted as if someone was forcing him to ask the question. “Those photographs, that young woman having sex with different men you said … you recognize any of the men?”

  “No.”

  “That was a quick answer.”

  “Well I didn’t—”

  “You take a good long look at each picture huh?”

  “Not really.”

  He pulled off to the side of the road without using a turn signal, a maneuver that earned him a horn and a finger from the driver behind. Leaving the car running and in gear, he turned to Annie. “How many pictures did you find?” Still trying to be careful with her, Gray held his face in what passed for a kindly expression … but Annie could tell it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to stay calm.

  “I told you, there were eleven snapshots.”

  “Eleven different men with Hope.”

  “Hope? She was the girl who was killed—”

  “And you looked at each of those eleven different men, could you see their faces really well?”

  “To tell you the truth I was mainly trying to determine if Paul was—”

  “What the fuck your husband got to do with this huh?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know why he had those pictures—”

  “Was Growler in any of the photographs?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I was looking to see if Paul—”

  “You didn’t recognize anyone huh?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that, I told you—”

  “Don’t bullshit me on this.”

  “I thought one of the
men was vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him.”

  Gray grabbed the steering wheel and hit the accelerator, pulling a U-turn and traveling now above the speed limit back in the opposite direction.

  She asked where they were going.

  He didn’t answer.

  She told him she changed her mind, she wanted to see a doctor after all.

  No reaction from Gray.

  “You offered to take me to a hospital, that’s where I want to go.”

  Nothing.

  “Please, you said you’d take me to a hospital or wherever I wanted to go … take me to the Nefferings’ house.”

  Gray didn’t answer, he was concentrating on driving and on something else, whatever was troubling him, whatever decision he was trying to make.

  After a few more miles Annie recognized the route they were taking. “No, I don’t want to go there.”

  “I’ll just pick up those pictures, then take you—”

  “No, this isn’t right! That man, Growler—”

  “He won’t hurt you.”

  “Don’t take me back there, please.”

  But Gray obviously wasn’t going to change his mind and Annie had to settle for curling up in the seat, feeling small and vulnerable in Kempis’s oversized jacket.

  She made gray stop the car before turning into Cul-De-Sac’s lane, Annie wanted to show him the exact spot where Growler had been thrown from the truck. He wasn’t there … no body, no blood.

  “I bet he walked back to Cul-De-Sac,” Annie said, her voice rising. “He was naked, he was hurt bad … he had to go back to Cul-De-Sac, he’s there right now, he’s—”

  “He won’t hurt you as long as I’m around.”

  “You don’t understand, I don’t even want to see him.”

  “Mrs. Milton, those photographs are critical to an investigation—”

  “What investigation, you won’t tell me anything! Is Teddy still in jail? Why did Paul have those photographs?”

  “The charges against Camel are being dropped.”

  “Why did you keep insisting he killed Paul?”

  “I was obligated to explore that possibility.”

  “Obligated to charge him with murder?”

  “It wasn’t a homicide charge and I told you huh … all charges are being dropped. The photographs are important for another reason, unrelated case.”

  “Unrelated case? Then what in hell am I doing here?”

  He told her to get back in the car. Gray drove to the side of Cul-De-Sac where he stopped and killed the engine, turned off the headlights. “Get out.”

  Annie told him she intended to file a complaint. “You’re putting me in danger bringing me here, this isn’t right.”

  “Do you know what vehicle Growler is driving?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He reached over and grabbed her by the hair. “What’s he driving huh?”

  Annie was almost as frightened of Gray as she had been of Growler … why was this happening to her?

  “Mrs. Milton.” He shook her by the hair. “His car huh?”

  “I didn’t see what he was driving.”

  “How’s he get around, there’s no vehicle here now.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gray released her. “I thought you said he was crippled, how’d he make it back here from the county road?”

  “I don’t know.” Annie was confused and weary … she just wanted this all to be over with.

  “Get out of the car.”

  “Please don’t make me go back in that building.”

  “You’re safer in there with me than out here by yourself.”

  He was right. They left the car and walked to the side door Growler had left open, Gray went in first … he’d taken out a semiautomatic pistol. Annie held onto the back of his suit jacket and stayed close, that’s how they walked through Cul-De-Sac, up the stairway, to the workshop on the second floor.

  The nail Annie had hammered through Growler’s foot still stuck up from the floor, the chest was still there, papers and spike nails still scattered around it, and when Gray wasn’t looking Annie glanced at the shelf and saw that the elephant was still where Growler had placed it, between a circular saw and an electric sander … but the photographs were gone.

  “Goddamn you lady, you have no idea—”

  “Growler must’ve taken them.”

  After putting the pistol away, Gray grabbed Annie and shook her hard.

  “Please … why are you doing this?” Why was everyone doing horrible things to her?

  Gray let go. “You’re telling the truth about what you did to his foot?”

  “There’s the nail, it’s still in the floor!”

  “And breaking his arm?”

  “Yes it was definitely broken.”

  “So maybe he crippled his way back here from the county road but then couldn’t get any farther, he’s holed up somewhere in the building.”

  “Yes!” It seemed to be what Gray wanted to hear.

  “That little bastard knew a million places to hide in this building.”

  “Yes he’s hiding here, you should call in your troopers to search the place, every inch of it.”

  He looked at her and finally made up his mind about whatever had been troubling him. “Yeah, right … we’ll go on that assumption huh … Growler hiding somewhere in Cul-De-Sac, got the pictures with him.”

  She agreed again, anything to get out of here.

  “Tell you what, I’m going to lock you in this room—”

  She couldn’t believe it, Annie thought she must’ve misunderstood what he just said.

  But Gray repeated that he intended to lock her in the room. “For your own safety, so Growler can’t get to you … I’ll take a look around—”

  “No! You call for reinforcements or do whatever you have to do but I want to be taken away from here before—”

  Gray was already moving toward the door, Annie tried to beat him out of the room but he grabbed the back of the jacket. “I’m sorry,” he said, pushing her away and then slamming the door with Annie inside. She heard the padlock close.

  Using both hands Annie beat on the inside of the door and kicked it, threatening Gray and then begging him not to leave her here.

  “I’m sorry huh?” he said through the door.

  She cursed him.

  “You’ll be safe in there.” Leaving the key in the lock, Gray walked away.

  Annie kept hollering for him, refusing to believe he’d really left her here. She turned around, the windowless room putting her at a loss what to do. Turning to the door and pounding on it again she called for Gray and waited and called for him again … nothing. Annie went to the shelf and held the elephant in her hands for a few seconds before hiding it behind the circular saw, probably a futile gesture because what good would a gold-and-jeweled elephant do her if Growler got back in this room … after what she’d done to him he’d kill her for sure. Annie remembered his voice when he promised to cripple her. What if he’s here in this room … hiding?

  She looked around, really only one place to hide … a big walk-in closet to the right of the fireplace. Annie went over there and gingerly opened the door, the closet full of old furniture and moldy bedding … unlikely anyone could hide in there but just to be sure she clicked the lock and shut the closet’s door.

  She still didn’t feel safe, nothing and no one in the world not even Teddy Camel could make her feel safe here in Cul-De-Sac.

  38

  Jake Kempis turned off the fire alarm and sent the other two security guards away before asking Camel what’d happened.

  “I came in and the guy who tossed the office was still here. I pulled the alarm to get rid of him.”

  “Who was it, what was he looking for?”

  Camel didn’t reply. His stomach was tender from being punched by McCleany, whenever he moved his right arm the bicep hurt from where the golf ball had struck him, he was tired, he wanted to see Annie … Camel di
dn’t think he owed Kempis an explanation. “Listen Jake if you got to write a report or whatever about the alarm, go ahead and do it but I have to meet some people so I’m leaving.”

  “You’re not going to brush me off like that. Sit down, I have to make a call.”

  “Yeah you make your call, meanwhile I’m—”

  Kempis took out a canister of pepper spray. “Sit down Teddy, I’m calling the state police, where’s your phone?”

  “What is this shit?” Camel asked coldly.

  “Come on, you should’ve known better than to come here after escaping jail, now where’s the—”

  “Escaping? Jake, use your head … I’m out on bail.”

  “No, Parker Gray said—”

  “You know anyone else at the state police beside Gray?”

  “Yeah, couple guys I been working with on that appointment.”

  “Gray’s not going to get you any appointments, he’s going to get your ass in trouble is what he’s going to get you. Give those other guys you know a call, ask ’em to check if I’m not out on bail.”

  Kempis wasn’t sure about it but followed Camel into the other office, to where the phone had been knocked on the floor. “Go on,” Camel told him, “do yourself a favor, make the call.”

  Kempis did, was put on hold, got through, talked to someone for less than a minute … then told Camel, “Gray’s been suspended.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Okay I’ll ask you straight out, what’s this all about?”

  “I still don’t know all the details except I know Parker Gray and his former partner Gerald McCleany screwed up a homicide investigation seven years ago.”

  “Screwed up as in …?”

  “As in framing a man for the murder, protecting the real killer, I don’t know … but it’s all coming down on their heads now and they’re both scrambling to keep out from under it.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Jake I don’t either, I’m still trying to put the pieces together. Gray lied to you about me escaping, his partner McCleany is the one who tossed this place … you don’t want to be involved with them believe me.”

  Kempis put the pepper spray back on his utility belt.