A Shattered Lens

by Layton Green

  Still, it was hardly bohemian. Most of the houses had undergone extensive renovations and cost far more than most working-class people, including Preach, could afford. The housing prices in Creekville were pushing out all of the artists and students and starry-eyed dreamers who had given the town its character in the first place.

  On his left, 122 Howard Street appeared, the address Terry had given him. Preach parked on the road and sat with his hands gripping the wheel, eyes shut for a long moment before he stepped out of the car.

  The walkway to Claire’s front door stretched before him like the plank of a pirate’s ship dropping into the icy dark. He took a deep breath and started walking, gravel crunching underfoot. Halfway to the two-story house, twin lights kicked on beside the front door.

  Preach knocked and shifted on the balls of his feet as he waited, his badge held high.

  The door cracked open, stopped by a chain. A moment later it widened, and Claire stood in the doorway wrapped in a silk bathrobe, hair mussed and falling past her shoulders in gentle waves, her long face smooth and beautiful even without makeup. Though she looked more mature and dark circles floated beneath her eyes, no doubt due to worry and lack of sleep, Claire Lourdis was still the same bombshell she had been in high school.

  Preach saw the recognition in her eyes at once. Normally when someone answered the door at night, they did so with sleep-filled eyes, blinking, addled from the sudden interruption.

  Claire looked very much awake. She peered right through him, as if trying to see into the back of the car parked by the curb.

  “Claire, do you remember me ?”

  She swallowed before she spoke. “Of course, Joe. Everyone knows you’re back. I’m sorry about last year.”

  He gave a curt nod. “Me too.”

  Her eyes flashed, and he knew the niceties were over. “Do you have him?” she said quietly. “Tell me you have him.”

  He stepped forward and lightly touched her arm, trying to project as much strength as he could in the hope that some of it would flow into her. “Claire,” he said as gently as he could. “I’m sorry. We—”

  She smacked his arm away, hard. “What do you mean you’re sorry? Where is he ? Where the hell is he ?”

  Preach gripped her by the arms, just hard enough to stop another blow. “We found him in the woods, Claire. He’s gone. I’m so very sorry.” In the split-second it took her to register his words, her head cocked to the side in a confused manner, as if disoriented. Then her eyes rolled back and she ceased to have weight. He caught her as she fell, eased her to the ground, and held her as she screamed, a knife of grief slicing into the calm center of the night.

  When she finished screaming, her nails dug into him as she clawed her way to her feet, using him as leverage. She looked as if she might bolt, but he applied an ounce of pressure on her arms, suggesting, and she convulsed with sobs as she fell into him. It took all of his willpower to maintain his own composure.

  “Joe,” she moaned. “Joe, my baby boy.”

  He hugged her tight, trying to absorb her pain. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  “Tell me it’s not true. Tell me it might not be him.” She gripped the hair on the back of his head so hard it made him wince. “Tell me, Joe!” It was the one thing he couldn’t do.

  When Claire was coherent again, Preach told her how her son had died and where they had found the body, though he wasn’t sure she was listening. Worried she might be a suicide risk, he flipped through her cell phone and called her mother, a local retired nurse. After her own breakdown on the phone, she rushed over to console her daughter. He left them huddled together on the sofa, weeping, calling out the name of their lost one.

  Unable to imagine their grief but feeling it twisting inside him, he drove home and drank bourbon on the screened porch until he was numb enough to sleep.

  A piercing siren sounded over and over in Preach’s dreams, a foghorn on a boat adrift in a wine-dark sea. The boat started rocking as the waves crashed in, and an image of Claire’s face was superimposed in the moonlit sky like an ancient goddess gazing down on her creation with infinite sadness. Then it was Ari’s face and she was leaning over him, shaking him awake.

  “Joe! It’s almost eight. You slept through the alarm.”

  He blinked and sat up. “I did?”

  “When did you get home ?”

  The events of the night flowed back into him like a returning tide of polluted water. “I don’t know. Late. Then I stayed up a while.”

  “Why?”

  With a sigh, he dressed for work and gave her a recap.

  Ari pressed a hand to her mouth. “God, how terrible. I can’t imagine.”

  “I know the mother,” he said. “Or I used to. We went to high school together.”

  She approached and cupped his cheek in her hand. “I’m sorry. You’re handling the case ?”

  “Yeah. Though . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid it might get worse when I dig. Worse for Claire, I mean.”

  She took his hand. “Does it have to be you? Maybe it’s time for Terry to step up ?”

  “He’s got a full plate right now, and he’s not ready for this. Besides, I think I . . . I should be the one. It’s why I’m here, you know?”

  Preach had over a decade of homicide experience in the war zone of the Atlanta PD. Besides Chief Higgins, who had cut her teeth in Charlotte, no other officer in Creekville had worked lead on a homicide.

  She reached up to kiss him. “I understand. Come to breakfast, okay? I made French toast.”

  “You did?” he said, surprised.

  He followed her to the table and saw the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time sitting beside a plate of buttered toast, along with a cup of coffee and a bowl of scrambled eggs.

  He gave her a rueful grin. “Cute.”

  Ari never had time to cook, but even when she did, culinary innovation was not one of her talents. He always appreciated the effort, but decided to reach for the Cackalacky sauce. The eggs would need it.

  She sat across from him, dressed in gray sweats and one of Preach’s old T-shirts. It was nice to see her relaxed. These days he usually saw her in business attire, and he knew she resented the conformity of it all. But she had kept the same hairstyle, a disheveled look that he loved, and that resembled a pile of straw assembled by a diligent family of squirrels. She also still wore her silver thumb rings, and instead of covering up the twin Jane Austen tattoos on the undersides of her wrists, half hope and half agony, she had added another: the scales of justice, just above her left ankle.

  As they ate, she pored over a legal brief while he made the daily news rounds on his cell phone. On the local scene, it was all about an issue that had inflamed Creekville in recent months: the push from developers to buy up real estate downtown, change the zoning laws, and shove in big-box stores and high-rise apartments. The locals were fiercely opposed to change, and everyone Preach talked to was convinced the developers would lose. But he knew money talked, and walked, and sifted through nimble fingers beneath tables.

  Nationally, the news had grown so absurd he had stopped paying attention. The unending litany of agenda-driven vitriol did nothing but divide a nation that needed desperately to be working together.

  Still, his eyes flicked over the headlines. Children buried alive after an earthquake in Mexico, displaced families wading through a filthy river in Bangladesh, another Hollywood mogul crashing through life with the mindless depravity of a Greek god.

  He slowly closed the phone. “Remember when we used to sit side by side and talk over breakfast ?”

  She glanced up. “Mmm?”

  “Do you really have to read that right this very moment ?”

  She frowned. “Yeah. I kinda do.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “You know I have an important witness interview tomorrow.”

  “Life’s short, Ari. The whole world is buried in their cell phones or in
their work.”

  He glanced away, knowing his outburst was unwarranted, and she laid a hand over his. “I know you’re processing last night.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, I understand you’re busy all day, and I’ve got to run, but maybe we can meet for lunch tomorrow, if I get done in time?”

  From her tone and the way her gaze slipped away, he could tell that the very thought of meeting him during the work day stressed her out. “It’s okay,” he said quietly.

  “You’re sure?”

  He downed his coffee, stood, and carried his dishes to the sink. “Knock ‘em dead tomorrow.”

  The Creekville police station was located on the second floor of a brick building with white awnings, situated above a gluten-free bakery and an ice cream parlor that specialized in frozen custard.

  Even though it was Sunday morning, the station was buzzing with the nervous energy of a murder. As soon as Preach passed through reception, Chief Higgins called him into her office and slapped a piece of paper on her desk.

  “What’s this ?” he asked. “Preliminary autopsy?”

  “An autopsy already?” the chief said. “What are we, McDonald’s for the dead?”

  “It’s the second murder in a decade.”

  “Check back tomorrow.”

  “They find a phone ?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  The chief was a top-heavy redhead with oily skin, a thin determined mouth, and arms as thick as barrels. Her personality, like her voice, was an odd combination of Southern matriarch, hardened police officer, and Zen Buddhist.

  “Tell me about the kid,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does he have a record?”

  “You spent too much time in Atlanta,” she said. “This is Creekville High we’re talking about. He was a model student, no discipline problems we know of.” She held up a palm. “Though views can get distorted when the star quarterback is involved.”

  “Who was looking into his disappearance ?”

  “Bill.”

  “Great.”

  She wagged a finger. “Be nice.”

  “Nice doesn’t solve murders.”

  She picked up a stress ball marked with a yin-yang symbol, leaned back, and started gently kneading it. “You’re right. Talk to Bill, but you should probably start from scratch.”

  “I was going to anyway.”

  She nodded, and her mouth tightened as she gripped the ball harder. “Dig, Preach. Coaches, friends, neighbors, Sunday School teachers. Short-term pain can be forgotten. But the longer this thing goes unsolved . . . this is one of those crimes that can tear a town apart.”

  “Thanks for the added pressure. What I can promise is that I’ll do my job, the best I know how.”

  “I want a list of suspects by Friday.”

  Before he left, he picked up the piece of paper the chief had set in front of him. “What’s this?”

  “Bill’s report on the missing person case. Look at the second paragraph. The night David disappeared, one of the neighbors heard a disturbance at the Lourdis house. A screaming match.”

  He finished reading Officer Wright’s notes from Friday, October 3. In response to Bill’s inquiry, Claire had blown off the incident, saying her son was a typical angst-ridden teen upset with his mother’s boyfriend. “So Claire and David were fighting about her new fling. That’s not uncommon after a divorce.”

  “The divorce was years ago.”

  “It’s hard to see your mom date around.” A long breath seeped out of him. “God, she’ll never forgive herself if she drove him away that night.”

  “Probably not. But you need to ask her a few questions.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You need to ask her if she owns a gun.”

  He started. “With an execution-style shot to the head? A mother? I don’t think now’s the time—”

  “We’re not positive about the time of death, but it looks like it’s going to be soon after he left the house. How many people could he have run into?”

  “It just takes one. He was distraught and could have gone anywhere. Who the hell knows what happened?”

  “That’s right,” she said softly, pointing a finger at him. “It just takes one. So ask.”

  4

  After Preach left the station, he wanted to order his thoughts before he talked to Claire, and he felt the need for more coffee. Good coffee, that was.

  Minutes later, he pulled into the gravel lot of Jimmy’s Corner Store, a cafe and local market that served as Preach’s second office. He entered the packed cafe and sat on a barstool at the counter, facing the chalkboard menu and an old tin Sunbeam Bread sign that had probably been there for fifty years.

  Over the years, the aroma of roasting coffee had permeated the tables, overstuffed chairs, and blue clapboard walls. Preach hunched over his mug and thought about how best to approach Claire. He hated to impose on her grief so soon, but a timely investigation was essential. Evidence degraded over time.

  Officer Wright’s case file was painfully thin. It was obvious he hadn’t thought David was in imminent danger. Bill had made a few calls but, except for David’s argument with his mother, uncovered no evidence of enemies or disturbing behavior.

  Which Preach wasn’t buying. That kind of crime, the murder of a healthy male from close range and a careful dump of the body, didn’t scream spur-of-the-moment decision to Preach. What he thought was that past events had initiated a chain reaction that for some reason had come to a head after David left his house. Whether the argument with his mother had anything to do with that, well, he would just have to see.

  On Monday, he planned to visit the school. Talk to the teachers and coaches and David’s friends. Where else did teenage boys hang out these days ? Preach thought about his own youth and the hell he had raised, but things were different now. He and Wade and the crew had drunk themselves silly and smoked a little pot, but they hadn’t had drugs that could ruin your life with one puff or pharmaceutical concoctions mixed in bathtubs that could make you claw your own face off.

  Had David been into drugs? Gotten involved with the wrong crowd?

  There were other possibilities, ones Preach had seen with homeless teens time and time again. Ones that made him shudder. He still didn’t like to look at a missing persons report for children, or even the back of a milk carton. A crime against a child was a stain on the human race.

  Still, none of that rang true here. He needed to know more, peel back the layers.

  It just pained him to do it with Claire’s child.

  The town was buzzing as Preach drove through the leaf-strewn streets to the Lourdis house. The activity still surprised him. In his day, Sunday was for church and nothing else. Fancy clothes and fried chicken on the table, shuttered shops throughout the town. His own parents would rather have slept in the snow than pass through the doors of a church, but the Creekville of his youth was still steeped in Southern tradition.

  Over the years he had done some reading on how secularization and religion waxed and waned in various cultures over time. He had some thoughts on the matter, most of them involving societal norms instead of any sea change in spirituality. But now, as far as he could tell, cafés and brunch spots were the preferred form of worship in Creekville on a chilly Sunday morning.

  He swung into Wild Oaks, and driving through the neighborhood in the daylight, with its abundance of wood chips and wire fencing in the front yards, made Preach feel as if he were inside a giant chicken coop. Yippies, he liked to call the residents of Wild Oaks. Half yuppie, half hippie.

  Claire’s handsome, traditional two-story home was much more all-American than the others. Featuring white siding with brick trim, along with dogwoods, accenting an ivy-covered arbor, the home was one of the few with a manicured lawn. About the only solidarity with the Creekville vibe was a patch of solar panels on the roof.

  After parking, Preach shrugged on his overcoat, stuck his noteb
ook in an inside pocket, and walked to the front door. A burly man in his forties answered the knock. He looked Preach up and down. “Can I help you?”

  “Is Claire home ?”

  “Who are you?”

  He had the quick speech of a businessman, along with a hint of Carolina twang. Preach took a moment to answer, noting the man’s tanned skin, cunning eyes, and clipped dark hair. His two front teeth were a touch too long, and the one on the left was shinier than the other. Probably reconstructed. With his loafers, slacks, and Ralph Lauren sweater, he looked as out of place in Creekville as a farmer in Manhattan.

  “A friend.” Preach took out his badge. “And a detective.”

  “She can’t talk right now. Jesus,” he said, his eyes darting to the side, “have some respect.”

  “What’s your name ?”

  “Brett. Brett Moreland.”

  “And you are ?”

  “Her boyfriend.”

  “I understand your concern, but I promise to be gentle. Given the circumstances, I think she’ll want to talk to me. Timing is crucial to a murder investigation.”

  Brett steepled his fingers on his forehead. “Murder. God, how did this happen? What was that kid into ?”

  “Why do you think he was into something ?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—hey, aren’t they all ? I just don’t know what to do. Claire isn’t doing so well.”

  “I’d expect not.”

  Brett didn’t seem to notice the remark. “You said you’re a friend?” “I knew her in high school.”