The Trees Beyond the Grass (A Cole Mouzon Thriller)

by Reeves, Robert

  “Perhaps… And you, sir? What keeps you here, family?”

  “Nah, my folks moved up to Vermont after I went to college up at Dartmouth. When I landed a tenure track back here at C. of C., they decided they would stay. They come and visit in the winter for several weeks since I took over their place. But, other than that, there isn’t much in the way of family around here… I can’t really say what keeps me here. I mean, it is a great place. The people are so proper and mannered and such, like the magazines say. And life in such a beautiful city is pretty damn good. But I think it’s comfort more than anything else. It’s where I was raised. Memories of Mark, even if they are bitter, are still sweet, and I think if I moved anywhere else, I fear I would lose that tether that binds us. Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

  “Uhm, not at all. My tether is just a little more elastic than yours, but I am nonetheless fully and completely connected to this damn humid place.” Cole smiled.

  “I got one!” Billy shouted from the edge of the dock, providing a distraction from the otherwise serious conversation. “Well, where’s the net? Let’s scoop him up!” Cole walked over and immediately noticed that the crab was way too small to eat, but decided to scoop him up just for Billy’s reaction. “Slowly now. Let me get the net under him.” Cole dipped the net in and under the crab, still firmly clasping onto the pale chicken neck, lifting them in one large scoop.

  “Wow! That sucker is huge!” Cash had decided to aid in the excitement. “But what are we going to do with just one crab? That might cause a fight between us, ’cause I can tell you I would eat the whole thing.” Cash had clearly picked up on the need to release the crab.

  “Yeah, Billy, that booger is a whopper, but let’s let him go and we can catch him another time when we plan on cooking crab. Deal?” Cole was working at suggestion in hopes Billy wouldn’t put up a fuss about abandoning his catch.

  “Uncle Cole…Cash, you must be blind. That thing is tiny. I could eat ten of him. I’m letting him go.” Cash and Cole burst out laughing at their clear misperception of Billy’s intelligence. The crab released and sun-baked, the boys walked back to the house. Billy rode on Cole’s shoulders and leaned down for a whisper. “Uncle Cole, I like him.”

  Cole looked over at Cash, trying to avoid being overheard. “Yeah? I like him, too.”

  CHAPTER 65

  LEAS PULLED UP to the powder-pink stucco home of Dr. Steve Christie and took a second to compose himself in his rented Camry. The stench of whiskey still lingered around him, though he’d attempted to cover it up with mouthwash. The three-story East Battery home overlooked the Charleston Harbor and Mount Pleasant. He buzzed the black wrought-iron gate’s intercom twice before it was answered by someone who was clearly the maid or housekeeper. “Christie residence, may I help you?”

  “FBI ma’am, I need to talk to the doctor please.”

  “Which one?” Leas hadn’t picked up on the wife also being a doctor. Keeping it in the family. “Mr. Christie, please.”

  “He isn’t home.” The static-tinged voice responded.

  “Is the missus in, then?”

  “One second.”

  The gate cranked open and Agent Leas walked across the slate driveway to the back of a long triple-level piazza. The housekeeper was waiting at the top of the steps and escorted him towards the entrance of the home. Leas eyed a perfectly manicured garden behind the old slave quarters, now a garage. Walking in, he looked around and took in the opulence of the home with its dark mahogany woods and twenty-foot ceilings. The floors were wood, painted black, which made the ornate white crown molding stand out. The home was long and much larger than it appeared from the outside.

  From the hall, heeled steps could be heard moving toward where he stood. He stared. Christian Louboutins. He had no clue about woman’s attire, much less shoes, but he knew what the red-bottomed heels meant. His last year with Maria was marked by their tenth anniversary and he had splurged on the thousand-dollar shoes. He had never seen her so happy. God, he missed her.

  The woman before him clasped her hands in front of her as she spoke. “I’m Dr. Christie, how may I help you?” Her words were short, uninviting. He had heard that extending a hand to a lady was considered rude in the older parts of the city, but he suspected she was intentionally sending a signal that she was not happy to see him.

  Still looking around, he said, “Ma’am, Agent Leas from the FBI. Do you have a moment to talk?”

  “Of course. We can talk in the parlor. Treece, please bring us some tea.” Leas followed Mrs. Christie across several rooms, all perfectly fit for sitting in his opinion, until they reached one at the farthest end of the home overlooking a formal garden. Topiary filled its edges, with a black fountain in the middle. The equally meticulous room seemed composed to capture the best view, down to the letter opener in its proper place like a display.

  Turning away from looking out the window, Mrs. Christie asked, “Now, what is it I can do for you, Officer?”

  Ignoring the clear jab at his authority, Leas said, “Agent, ma’am, and I was hoping to talk to your husband. Would you happen to know when he will be home?”

  “He is actually off on a business trip to Texas for a medical convention. I don’t think he returns until next week. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Well, I really need to talk to him, Doctor. But let me ask you, have you seen any suspicious packages arrived in the past few weeks? They would be small and nondescript, likely in a brown or white box.”

  Her hands still tightly clasped before her as if she were about to belt out an opera, Mrs. Christie looked away in an obvious attempt to dodge eye contact. “No…no, not that I recall. Should I be concerned, Agent? What is going on and why should my husband be involved with this?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say at the moment. But has your husband been to New York or California lately?”

  Surprised, she said, “I don’t believe so.”

  “Can I have his phone number to call him? I just have a few questions and I think I can resolve them if I can talk to him.”

  “Of course, but don’t get frustrated if he doesn’t immediately respond. As I said, he is in lectures most of the day.” Mrs. Christie wrote down her husband’s number on a piece of paper Agent Leas was certain was expensive, the heavy-weight kind. Escorted back to the door by Treece, he noted a cell phone sitting with keys in a bowl in the foyer. Outside, he withdrew his phone from his jacket, now damp from the humidity of the city, and punched in the number Mrs. Christie had given him as the door closed behind him. He could hear a phone vibrating back inside the home.

  CHAPTER 66

  POINSETT WAS LIVID. Mouzon had disappeared and she couldn’t figure out how to flush him out since the FBI agent showed up in Charleston. Without a lead, she’d had to stall the hunt. Her need to kill was spilling over violently like a boiling pot of water, making it more and more difficult to control her rage. She needed Mouzon dead.

  Still brewing over the FBI’s interference, she reflected back on when she learned about Mouzon and the others. She was in school in Charleston. A guy had mentioned the old event, saying he knew one of the victims. She’d started digging in the archives of the News and Courier and the afternoon paper, The Evening Post. It took weeks, but she found it there on the front page. From there the investigation splintered off. With help of the limited internet, she researched any kidnapping and murder that had occurred where the children were branded and released, their parents murdered. Slowly she found the others.

  Somewhere during her search the realization grew that but for them, she would have never have been abandoned, abused. Why had the Taker chosen them over her? It wasn’t as simple as her sex; Whitney Havex defeated that theory. She needed to know and the answer wasn’t going to come from those he let go. If she was to ever get answers she had to lure him out.

  Agent Leas and those around Mouzon threatened to frustrate her attempts to end their hold over her once and for all. It was Mouzon s
he wanted dead, not the rest. If she couldn’t get him away from them she would have to draw him out to deal with this new contingency. Bread crumbs.

  CHAPTER 67

  IT WAS FIVE till six when Jackie walked into the house. Without turning his head from the game he was playing on TV, Billy acknowledged his mother. “Hey Mom!” He was sitting on the floor next to Cash, deep into his next move. Jackie continued past the boys into the kitchen. “Well, hey! How was work?” Cole was standing over a cast iron frying pan full of small cornmeal-battered shrimp sizzling from the heated peanut oil.

  “Someone went shrimpin’ I see.”

  Billy shouted from the other room, “Mister Cash and I caught all those, Mom. Uncle Cole just watched and colored.” Cole raised his shoulders with a sideways smile on his face and saw his sister look over her shoulder to pass a glance at Cash. “Watching, huh? I bet… Damn, I hate that I missed that show.” A large mischievous smirk crossed her face revealing she knew exactly what Cole was actually watching.

  “Anyway…whew, am I red?” She fanned herself. “What was it you asked? Oh, yeah, work… It was good, way too busy. I pulled the files of Cash’s brother and plan to hit those tonight.” Her head was still turned to watch Billy and Cash zoned into the TV. She leaned into the counter, resting on her forearms to get a better look into the next room. “Looks like someone has a new friend.”

  “Which one?” After taking the pan off the stove Cole joined his sister in taking in the view still sitting in the living room.

  Jackie turned around and pressed her back into the counter’s edge to engage her brother directly. Cole asked, “Any news on that Poinsett craziness?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Your buddy Agent Leas locked himself in one of our spare offices for half the day and then bolted out of there like the place was on fire. Haven’t heard from him since.”

  “Poinsett?”

  “Likely, but no clue. As much booze as that guy smells like, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is just using the office as his private bar.” Jackie leaned her head back, staring at the ceiling. “Billy, get your things together, we need to get you home and in the tub. I can smell that stinky pluff mud from here.”

  “Here, take some of these shrimp with you. There are way too many.” Jackie nodded thank you at Cole’s offer.

  “Awh, mom, but we’re at Saruman’s Tower trying to break the dams to flood the Orcs’ fortress. Ten more minutes. Pleeease?”

  “No, pause it or something. Your mom is tired and you still need to eat before your bath and bed.”

  “Awwwwh.”

  “Don’t ‘awh’ me, now say goodbye.” Cole stared at his sister, seeing her in new light since Billy was born. Gone were the tantrums and wild days of her youth when, at sixteen, she hid beer under the trailer out on Rifle Range. The woman before him was in no way associated with the girl dragged out of a boy-filled hotel room at seventeen by his father when she failed to come home after the prom. Motherhood looked good on her and changed her. She had always been strong and motherly to Cole. But that strength had only intensified with Billy in her life. The wild parties, the poor decisions had sloughed off like caked-on marsh mud, revealing the woman now before him.

  “I guess I better go, too. It’s getting late and I have gym in the morning.” Cash nodded his head and exited the living room behind Billy.

  “Wait! You aren’t going to eat any of these shrimp I just slaved in the kitchen frying?”

  Cash came alongside Cole, lightly gripped his neck from behind and threw a shrimp into his mouth. “Delicious. But, it’s gotten a bit later than I thought and I do need to go. I have to work on some prep for a seminar I’m presenting at in two weeks and have nothing done. I promise I’ll make it up to you, though.”

  Cole just frowned as the group walked out the door together. Gravel sounds dimmed into silence as their cars drove down the broken stone drive, leaving Cole alone again in the big house. Well, fuck. What just happened?

  After eating alone on at the dinette, still slightly sad, he slumped down into one of the old leather living room chairs and cleared his head. Moments like this, of nothingness, passing through his head, recharged him.

  After several minutes he wakened from his meditation. Okay, let’s do this.

  CHAPTER 68

  “COME IN. PARDON THE MESS.” Agent Leas had called after everyone had left and requested Cole come to his hotel. From his voice, it sounded urgent, and Cole did not hesitate at the offer. The request to go to his hotel seemed unusual, but it was late. As Leas put it, ‘She won’t be looking for you here unless she’s really dumb and I’d like your insight on some things.’

  Thirty minutes later Cole pulled up to the old roadside hotel. Walking in, the room was dank with the scent of spent booze and musky carpet. Cole suspected the odor arose from the several empty liquor bottles that lay on their sides in the corner. One of the two queen beds was undone and a mess, the other apparently a makeshift desk.

  Cole spoke without thinking. “This may be the first time I actually wish the government spent more. Did you find this place in the back of some seedy magazine or a bathroom stall?”

  Leas grinned, liking Cole’s candor. “The latter. But I didn’t invite you over to admire my room. I’ve pulled all the files for the six children, including you, who were taken around the time of your kidnapping. All with brands. All released.”

  “Yeah, and what have you found?”

  “Sit, sit. This may take a moment.” Seeing no place to sit, Cole swept some old newspapers off the corner of the bed and caught an article from what appeared to be Texas with the headline, “Man Butchered In Dallas.”

  Several manila folders had been spread across the floor, each with a name and a date. His name was missing. “These are the three victims to date. Tony Patrick, Whitney Havex, and Phillip Neal. New York, Texas, California. The only things holding them together are the missing marks at this point.” Cole picked up the Neal file and let it fall open in his hands. There were pages of police reports, but what caught his eye were the photos. There, lying face down, was a man associated with him by a common thread, a dangerous past that held them together like a web. That thread ran between all the kidnapping victims and now, like a spider, someone was waiting for vibrations on the thread to direct their attack. What had these three done to be killed? What have I done to be next?

  “I suspect you’ve already cross-referenced their cell phone records, emails, and credit cards, correct?” Cole’s days as a criminal defense attorney had taught him a tremendous amount about the crumbs we all leave when we go about our daily lives. With the right eyes, most people’s activities read like a very tight schedule.

  Leas sat down on the unkempt bed. “Yeah, there was nothing. Just static.”

  “And the coroners’ reports? Anything of interest in there? There was poison in the Patrick case, right?” Cole had read the police for Patrick that Leas had provided at their meeting. He wasn’t given the entire file now sitting on the bed, or the report in the New York case.

  “Yeah, but we haven’t any indication of that in the Havex case. But you’re more than welcome to look.” Cole pulled out the Havex report and began eyeing it for facts.

  Lacerations, cardiac failure, contusions… Nothing stood out for someone who had been in a struggle, cut up from her navel to her neck and then spread open like the doors of a bloody bird cage. “Did you say she died from poison?”

  Leas looked up from the file he was reading. “No, that was the other one. We have no injection site in the Havex case. But there is evidence her heart just stopped, so there is some suggestion of an agent. Of course, without any clue, it’s almost impossible to isolate the agent if one was used.”

  Cole’s brain began flicking through his metal library of images from book pages and medical articles he had seen over the years until it stopped on a particular page. “Have you looked into a poison, such as belladonna?”

  Looking quizzical for a moment, Leas
slowly took a deep breath. “Uhm, not sure. But, how would you know about poisons?” Leas leaned in.

  Cole laughed. He often got this response when he spat out random information. “I worked a few murder cases when I was a PD involving poisons and otherwise have come across it handling toxic cases. The ME’s report says dilated eyes and a bad heart. The tropane alkaloids in belladonna, or nightshade, cause sensitivity to light, blurred vision, loss of balance, confusion, elevated heart rate and ultimately death if not treated immediately. The tell-tale sign of belladonna is dilated pupils.” Cole grinned at Leas. Cole’s ability to recall everything he had seen impressed even himself on occasions. But, the revelation of his childhood had shaken his confidence in that skill until this moment. He liked that he was still a walking encyclopedia. It comforted him.

  Leas wanted to laugh in amazement, but opted to just shake his head with a large grin on his face. “Hmm, that’s interesting. Well, assuming poison was used, ingestion versus injection would clearly represent a swap in methodologies versus the Patrick matter and there is still no sign of poison in the San Diego killing.”

  COLE FLICKED FURTHER in the file, stopping at interior pictures of the scene. He stared at them for a minute or more and then looked up to the empty beige wall of the hotel room. Slowly, he pushed what he had just seen out and onto the wall, creating a mental transparency that existed in all three dimensions in his eyes. The mental space constructed, he mentally walked around in the crime scene of the Havex murder, maneuvering corners and furniture. Wine bottles lay next to her chair. Cole turned to the kitchen and saw a wine cart with a missing glass. He pulled one from the hooks and inspected it. Then he withdrew from the space, his vision going black before refocusing on the wall.

  After several seconds he asked, “I don’t see a chain of custody for the glasses. I saw where it said that Havex had alcohol, wine in her system at the time of death. Ten to one, she was poisoned by her chardonnay. There are stray wine bottles on the floor; so likely not by the bottles. Perhaps lacing of the glasses sitting on the wine cart, a wine goblet is missing?” Cole turned away from the wall to Leas, whose mouth was wide open.