by J. A. Kerley
“Jesus,” Vince whispered. “Can you get prints, Pittypat?”
“Composite handles can be tough, Vince,” Petitpas said quietly, anger printed on his normally jovial features. “And it’s been soaking. But if this SOB wasn’t wearing gloves, we’ll get you prints.”
We retreated from the sodden yard as Officer Jason Roberts’s body was loaded into an ambulance, grim-faced cops watching the second of their own to die violently in under two weeks, first Menendez, now Roberts.
“What do you think, Carson?” Vince said. “Any connection to the burned girls? The religious thing you talked about?”
“Our boy has a thing about women, Vince. If he’s targeted a male cop it’s a …” I paused, a weary mind suddenly making connections.
“What?” Vince said.
“Get your people to knock every door in the area,” I said, almost yelling. “Wake everyone up. If no one answers, find out who lives there.”
Vince was a fast study. “You think your perp made a grab and got caught in the act?”
“Knock those doors,” I said. “See if a woman is missing.”
Vince hustled away and I found a support group passing out Styrofoam cups of coffee, grabbed one and went to the Rover to escape the surging, angry cops. A half-hour later I heard my name being barked from a bullhorn.
“Detective Carson Ryder! Detective Ryder … you’re wanted at the front of the white apartment building!”
I sprinted the distance, found Vince looking for me. He gestured to follow him down a wide hall to apartment 22-A, a pair of thirtyish males outside the adjacent unit.
“We’ve got an empty here, Carson. No one’s answering. Her neighbors, these gentlemen, say the occupant is a medical-equipment salesperson named Sissy Carol Sparks.”
“We thought we heard Sissy earlier,” the nearest male said. “Her door. But she’s out a lot on business.”
“Thanks, guys,” Vince said. “You can go back inside.”
The pair nodded and retreated into their unit. When the door closed Vince turned to me. “I ran the name, Carson. Miz Sparks may be selling something, but I doubt it’s medical equipment.”
“Prostitution?”
“Remember Madame Cho’s house of horrors? Sparks was a masseuse. She went down in last year’s bust. She also had a possession arrest a month before that, heroin, but skated because it was her first.”
“Since then?”
“Nothing. Clean record.”
We heard footsteps and saw a pair of uniforms flanking a plump and bespectacled man in his mid forties, a brown jacket over khakis, the apartment manager bearing keys.
We stepped inside. A blind person would have known it was a woman’s space, the smell of female lotions and potions thick in the air. The living area was furnished sparsely, but with an eye to color, the couch and flanking chairs a roseate pastel, the walls a soft blue. There were a dozen framed photos on the walls, sky-heavy landscapes, vast tracts of blue over lonely, unpopulated beaches or flat plains of desert.
“Got blood on the carpet,” I said.
“And a picture on the floor,” Vince said, lifting a decorative photo of a seascape. “There’s where it came from,” he said, tapping a bent hanger on the wall as a possible scenario unfolded: the perp gains entry, punches the occupant to chill her out, as she spins backward her flailing hands knock the photo from its hanger.
“It’s my guy,” I said, stomach churning. “He’s got another one.”
47
Vince added the Sparks woman’s name and description to the van BOLO and scurried back to his department to monitor the search. I was too charged with adrenalin to sleep. Back in Mobile Harry and I would have headed to the Causeway, an eight-mile-long stretch of low road traversing upper Mobile Bay, sipping beers and staring into the dark water lapping at the reeds, or watching the lights of a freighter angling into the Port of Mobile. The Causeway was where we could retreat into ourselves as the stars wheeled above and the nightbirds called from the trees.
But my partner had retired and the Causeway was now just a place to visit in memory.
With no Harry and no Causeway, I followed the hammer to the forensics lab, passed hand to hand like an Olympics torch, the bearers hoping it could light the way to Officer Roberts’s killer. Martin Petitpas handed the hammer to Dr Arun Chandrakant, the Acting Director, who passed it to Dean Hogue, the specialist in latents. When I arrived Hogue had the hammer from the bag and was studying it stem to stern with a high-powered loupe as Petitpas looked over his shoulder.
“Water gonna be a problem, Dean?” Petitpas said. “Thing got soaked.”
Hogue was fifty, a laconic ex-Texan who wore cowboy boots, hand-tooled belts, and Western-style shirts under his lab jacket. Like me, he spent a lot of time outdoors either in a kayak or with a fishing rod in his hands, and his long and angular face was tan in the dead of winter. His gray eyes studied the hammer and I knew he was making calculations.
“Water shouldn’t be no problem, Martin,” Hogue said. “Problem’s the composite surface of the handle, shitty for holding prints. Plus the handle’s dimpled with holes. I’m thinking we’ll fume with cycrocrylate and use a gelatin lifter. We’ll fluoresce the tool and hope this fucker was too crazy to think about wearin’ gloves.”
“How much time?” I asked.
“I’m cooking long and slow, Carson. Like brisket. It’ll take two hours at least. I’ll set up now.”
There was nothing I could do for Sissy Carol Sparks but hope and pray that a cop saw a white van and the cavalry got there to find the woman alive. “I’ll be in my usual spot,” I said, walking the hall to a storeroom that had a cot. In my two years in Miami I’d bagged out there often enough that the cell-sized enclave had been dubbed “Ryder’s Room”. I reclined on the cot and fell into a doze, burned out by too many days of starting before dawn and ending deep into dark.
I was dreaming of a black fire when I heard my name and sat up to see Vince above me and shaking my shoulder.
“Hogue raised prints,” he said.
I jolted up and glanced at my watch. Almost three hours had passed and it was two in the morning. “When?”
“Fifteen minutes back. I let you sleep while we ran them through the databases. You looked like you could use it.”
I saw the sheets of paper in Vince’s hand. “You got a hit.”
He nodded. “A guy named Frisco Jay Dredd.”
“Dread?” I said, wondering if I was still dreaming.
“One E, two D’s. Thirty-six years old. He’s a mental with a record going back years.”
“Tell me you’ve got an address … anything.”
“That’s the shit. His last-known address was in Alabama at the Institute for Aberrational Behavior. You know the place, right?”
More than Vince realized: After my brother had been sent to prison for life, the ferocity of his supposed crimes and mental acuity drew the attention of the IAB’s then-director, Evangeline Prowse, who managed his transfer, studying him for nearly a decade. I’d also been there on other cases, in particular a madman named Bobby Lee Crayline who I’d tracked several years back.
“I know the Institute,” I said. “They do important work. When was this Dredd there?”
“Five years ago. He beat up a woman after having sex with her, got sent to Holman, but was too freaky for them to handle, ranting religious stuff all hours of the day and night. The IAB took him in for study. When his sentence was up, he was released.”
“What else you got?”
“Petty shit starting in his twenties, but increasing the past few years. Vagrancy. Shoplifting. Drinking and drugging busts. And general weirdness.”
“Like what?”
“Preaching hellfire and brimstone on street corners, drunk and ranting and scaring the bejeezus out of citizens. He once stormed into a church, pushed the minister aside and delivered his own sermon. The last entry is a petty theft rap, eighteen months ago. He stole vegetables from a sto
refront bin in south Alabama and took them to his digs under a bridge. When the cops arrived he was singing hymns and masturbating.”
“At least we have a name,” I said, trying for glass half-full. “And a description.”
“The bastard’s used to living in the shadows, Carson. Dredd could be anywhere.”
“You, uh, gonna broadcast the news that Dredd’s the killer?”
Vince backed out the door, looked up and down the hall, fearful of ears. “I do that, every cop in this city will want to put a bullet in his center ring. For right now, I’m saying he’s a person of interest. It’ll give us time to get more background, maybe put a net over him. Listen, Carson, I already foresee a problem with this Institute place …”
“Getting into Dredd’s records.”
Vince nodded. “I take it this is a medical facility, doctor-patient privilege and all.”
“I know the current director. I’ll see what I can do when morning hits.”
“Get some sleep, brother,” Vince said “We need you to hit the ground hard come the sun.”
I sat on the cot and leaned back, smelling that I needed a shower. I was too beat to head to the Palace, not with a ready cot under my ass.
“Tell Hogue I need a wake-up call at seven,” I said, and was probably asleep before I was horizontal.
48
Nautilus awoke at eight in the morning and checked his messages. Celeste Owsley needed to go to a Kissimmee hairdresser at one, Rebecca wanting to go to a nearby mall at three, something about shoes.
He took his coffee on the balcony, the cross shining in the east, the fresh sun waking the world as Nautilus pondered his options. I’m Carson’s eyes, he thought, gazing across the empty pasture, the beasts undoubtedly packed within the Ark. Nautilus figured park employees arrived a half-hour beforehand to get into costume and position. The employee lot was toward the rear, definitely not Joshua-level. He knew he could be an intimidating figure, especially for what he wanted to do. It could all fall flat. Unless …
He thought a moment and pulled his cell. “Howdy, Rebecca,” he said when the kid answered.
“Hi, Harry,” Rebecca Owsley said, sounding buoyed.
“Harry? How about Mister Nautilus?”
“You call me Rebecca.”
A sigh. The kid was a trip. “Listen, Rebecca, I’m going back over to the park this morning. Wanna go?”
“With you, Harry? Cool.”
“Best tell your mama.”
“She sleeps until around ten and if she gets up before that she’s like soooo bitchy. She’ll be all happy that we’re going back.” A pause. “And she won’t have me around all day.”
“I gotta shower, eat and get dressed. You in or not?”
The pair were at the park twenty minutes later and pulled into the employee lot, three acres of asphalt surrounded by sand and scrub.
“Why here?” Rebecca asked. “This is where the workers park.”
Nautilus adjusted the air conditioning and turned to Rebecca Owsley, wearing a brief white skirt and a red tank top, pink loafers on her feet. “You know I used to be a cop, right?”
“Sure.”
“I saw something last time. One employee hit another when she didn’t know anyone was watching. It interested me. I’m wondering if the employee who was struck might be frightened of the other, because that’s how she looked. I want to see if I can talk to the employee who was hit.”
“Why?”
“It might be a simple spat, or it might be something worse. It’s the way a cop thinks.”
“You said she, Harry,” Rebecca said. “Was it Tawnya who hit the other girl?”
Nautilus fought to keep his jaw from dropping. He’d left the kid at the restaurant on the far side of the restroom. No way she could have seen the confrontation.
“Why do you think that, Rebecca?” he asked.
“Because Tawnya’s a mean bitch.”
“Uh, pardon me?”
“I can tell by the way she talks to me. She thinks I don’t pick up on it, but I do. Once I saw her looking at me like she’d like to spit in my face. She thinks I think I’m special because I get a Joshua pass and you drive me around.”
“You saw all that?”
“I observed it,” the kid clarified. “But Tawnya didn’t see because I was looking sideways through sunglasses. I don’t think she’s real smart, but I’ll bet she makes up for it in nastiness. Hey … you know she’s got a tramp stamp? That’s a tattoo above her butt. They’re called tramp stamps because sluts get them.”
Nautilus had noted the ink on Tawnya’s arms, but the kid seemed one step ahead of him. Maybe it was the similarity in ages, Rebecca able to spot duplicity where Nautilus saw unctuous politeness.
“How do you know Tawnya has a tattoo there, of all places?”
“It was sunny the other day and she had on a white blouse, remember, kind of sheer? When you turn just right light goes through and you can see skin. I saw a dark shape sticking up from her skirt. Either it’s a real big birthmark or a tattoo.” Rebecca grinned mischievously. “But since it’s Trampy Tawnya, I’m betting tattoo.”
Nautilus didn’t know what to say, so he sat back within the sanctuary of smoked windows and watched the incoming parade of staff. You could tell the local employees – landscapers, electricians, maintenance types – from the part-timers, the former tossing out last-minute smokes from their cars and trucks as they entered the lot, the latter fresh-faced and younger and often arriving in groups. To the former it was a job, the latter saw a mission.
Nautilus looked in the rear-view and saw a blue Toyota van enter the lot, Tawnya at the wheel. The van pulled up to the employee entrance and a quartet of young women exited before the van pulled away. Nautilus scoped out the faces as the girls angled toward the back gate.
“That girl …” he said, nodding at a twentyish woman in tattered jeans and a tight gray tee, brushing back shoulder-length brown hair as she walked with her head down. “She’s the one Tawnya slapped.”
“Are you gonna go talk to her?”
Nautilus continued scoping out the girl, looking anxious, somehow frail, even in her youth. “I’m afraid she’ll get spooked. Especially if a guy comes up out of nowhere—”
“And has a voice like this deeeep,” Rebecca said, dropping two octaves, “and is about ten feet tall.”
Nautilus nodded. The kid not only saw things, she saw into things.
“Lemme do it,” Rebecca said, pushing on the door handle. “I’ll talk to her.”
“No way, stay here and we’ll—”
But Rebecca Owsley was out the door and moving across the parking lot.
Ten minutes passed and Nautilus was about to go after the girl when he saw Rebecca striding from the employee entrance, her face pensive. He opened the passenger door and she jumped inside.
“Rebecca, you can’t just go on your own like—”
“Her name is Greta. She’s scared to talk to you. She’s kinda weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Like she’s not all there, like maybe sixty per cent of her brain got turned on this morning. Anyway, I told her a friend of mine saw her get slapped and was wondering if she was OK. She got all scared and owlish, y’know?”
“Owlish?”
Rebecca widened her eyes to imitate fear. “Going, who? Who?”
“And you said?”
“You weren’t with the park, but a guy who took care of people, like a protector. She’d been all like go away, but when I said protector, she said, How? It was a good thing.”
“Who to How is good?”
“Who was scared, How was hopeful, at least just a little bit.”
Nautilus stared at the kid. She was sixteen?
“What happened then?”
“Greta got all schizo because some other workers were getting closer. I gave her your number and said call you, just to talk. She said she didn’t have a cell … she wasn’t allowed. I gave her my phone.”
Nautilus refrained from shaking his head. “You said you did other things in there. Like what?”
“I walked around to see if I could see Trampy Tawnya. No luck. Maybe she was busy slapping someone.”
49
When awakened I had the energy to head to the Palace, grabbing a shower and change of clothes. At eight I had called Belafonte and given her a quick overview of what was happening, telling her to continue her research on Johnson. I next left a message for Dr Nancy Wainwright to call as soon as she arrived at work.
Dr Wainwright had been the director of the Institute for Aberrational Behavior for six years. I had last been there five years ago on the Bobby Lee Crayline case, Wainwright calling me out of the blue when the sociopath’s legal team had wanted to hypnotically regress Crayline to his childhood, part of a defense strategy. Both she and the former director of the Institute, Dr Prowse, were terrified that the regression would blow the hinges off whatever final door kept Crayline in limited restraint.
The procedure went ahead anyway, and to disastrous effect, but I had answered Dr Wainwright’s summons and driven to the Institute to try and forestall the hypnosis. In my book she owed me one and it was time to collect on the chit.
Her call came at 9.45, and I was on it in a single ring. “Detective Ryder,” Dr Wainwright said, her voice pleasant and familiar. “It’s been a while. You’re still in Mobile I expect?”
“In Florida, Doc,” I said, picturing Wainwright, a slender woman now in her mid-fifties with penetrating and intelligent brown eyes behind round-framed glasses. She’d proven to be an excellent steward of the Institute founded by Dr Prowse, so much so that the former Alabama Institute for Aberrational Studies was now the National Institute for Aberrational Studies. “I’m an agent with the Florida Center for Law Enforcement.”