by Gulvin, Jeff
Jim Poynton took the stack of ballpoint pens from his shirt pocket and placed them, as he did every night after work, in the top drawer of his desk. Then he made sure that no paperwork was left out and the ‘in’ and ‘out’ stack of plastic trays was square, before he wiped the line of sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. He glanced at his watch, strapped across his thick, tanned wrist, and got up. Outside, he inspected the door to his Grand Am, which looked as though it was marked, but no, it was just a trick of the light. A blue Toyota, with dark-tinted windows, cruised west out of town. He looked again at his watch, already late for the meeting at city hall. They wanted to talk about litter patrols and he knew somebody was going to raise a question about highway work details from the correctional center. That would be Mad Martha again: she still reckoned, despite the two guards with a twelve-gauge and .357 apiece, that she was going to get raped by the inmates every time she drove over to Hartwell. Martha was seventy-seven years old. Maybe she was just hoping.
The meeting dragged on longer than he wanted it to and he hoped Mary had got the steaks on. He sat there at the back, doing his duty by the town, and all the time he was thinking about T-bones with onions and mushrooms and hot barbecue sauce, sizzling in a skillet on the stove. But when he finally got home, Mary’s Buick was not in the driveway. He pulled in anyway, thinking that maybe she was doing her paperwork, as she sometimes did in the back room at the store. That had been a godsend, getting to manage that place when old John Casey got too old to run it any more.
Mary was not in the house and no cooking smells greeted him and, worse than that, the T-bones still sat on waxed paper in the icebox. Poynton pulled a Coors Light from the six-pack and ripped off the ring pull, sucking on the froth that bubbled up from the hole. He called out, more than once, yelling at the top of his voice. Then, slipping the open beer can between his thighs, he drove up to the store. Her car was parked out front, but the door was locked. He paused and knocked, tried his own key, but couldn’t get it in the lock. Then he began to worry. She was still good-looking for her age and so much slimmer than him, and she hardly ever let him get on top of her these days. What if she was in the back right now, getting her rocks off with one of the local boys. He bit his lip, swallowed the rest of his beer and crushed the empty can in his palm. Tossing it on to the back seat of his car, he went round to the back of the shop. The dumpster was pushed against the wall and he had to shift it to get to the back door. It was heavy and he had to wiggle the wheels in the grass.
The back door was unlocked and slowly he turned the handle, a lump the size of a golf ball in his throat, waiting for those telltale sighs or little moans that would let him know for sure. He heard nothing though, and the back room was empty. Stepping through into the store itself, he was aware of the traffic passing outside, as the rest of the townsfolk went home from the meeting. She was not there, nothing was out of place. He scratched his head. Maybe she was next door with Jeanie-May in the fashion store or having a cup of coffee with the ladies from the pharmacy. There must be a simple explanation. The only thing that really bothered him, now he knew she wasn’t being spread from behind, was the ache of hunger in his stomach. He’d go on home, cook up the T-bones and wait for her to come in. Even now, there would more than likely be a message on the answer machine. As he turned to go, he paused and sniffed the air—a pungent aroma, tangy, resinous, almost like cigarette smoke, but not like it. Maybe she’d had a pipe smoker in, old Mack perhaps; if he wasn’t chewing Copenhagen, he was smoking.
Back at the house, however, there was no message. The last caller had been Ray Cavanagh’s number from work, but no message. Poynton took another beer from the icebox and sucked on it while he moved the T-bones around in the skillet. There would be no sauce. He could peel and chop onions, mushrooms for sure, but he couldn’t make Mary’s barbecue sauce.
When she wasn’t home by nine o’clock, he started to worry. He wanted to call somebody up, but felt foolish. He tried to watch TV, thinking she would show up at any minute, but she didn’t. In the end, he scoured the phonebook for her friends and almost apologetically began calling them up. One by one they told him they hadn’t seen her. Her car was still outside the jewellery store. Yes, he knew that. He put the phone down to the last caller and a tick started in his heavy, reddened cheek. He drank another beer and then got back in his car and drove up through town. It was dark now and quiet on the street, little to do save watch Jeopardy on TV. Her car was still there and he stood in front of the store with his hands in his pockets, as if just by peering through the darkened window he would see her and everything would be all right. But he couldn’t see her and it wasn’t all right. Turning, he crossed the road and went into the police department.
The chief wasn’t there, only Regan, the young officer who liked to chew on gum and toothpicks. Poynton had had little to do with him and suddenly felt foolish telling him about his wife not coming home. Regan listened to him, sitting back in the chair with his arms folded, and licked his upper lip when Poynton had finished speaking.
‘You sure she ain’t just off with the gals someplace, Mr Poynton. I mean it ain’t late or nothing.’
‘I’ve called up all her friends,’ Poynton said. ‘Guess I came on over here ’cause I can’t think what else to do.’
Regan pushed out his lips, then he stood up and lifted the heavy black flashlight from the desk. ‘Why don’t y’all show me the store, Mr Poynton, then I can figure out whether or not to call up the chief.’
They crossed to the store and Poynton led the way round the back, bumping against the green dumpster as he opened the door for Regan. Regan held the flashlight upended over his shoulder and shone it around the back of the store like a detective, then he moved inside. Poynton put on the lights and opened his hands wide. ‘Nothing here,’ he said.
Regan went into the store front and immediately stopped and sniffed. ‘Somebody’s been smoking weed in here.’ He turned and studied Poynton out of the side of his eye. ‘Your wife like a little bowl now and again, Mr Poynton, sir?’
Poynton stared at him. ‘Don’t be a fool, boy. She don’t even smoke tobacco.’
Again, Regan sniffed the heavy atmosphere that hung like an unseen mist in the room. ‘Think I’ll call me up the chief.’
The two of them wandered back across the now-deserted Church Street and Regan telephoned his boss. ‘Yeah.’ Poynton cringed as he spoke. ‘Somebody’s been smoking weed in the store front, Chief. I can tell you that sure as Ty Cobb hit a hardball.’
Old Mack, the chief of police, met them at the jewellery store and stood with his hands on his hips, heavy-jowled, glasses slipping down his nose and a police issue baseball hat sitting high on his head. He chewed a plug of tobacco, yellowed jaws working like a cow at the cud. ‘You sure she ain’t but run off, Jimmy?’ he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Now don’t say that, Mack. This is bad enough as it is.’
‘Mack.’ Regan’s voice called from outside the back of the store. The chief turned and saw Regan crouching in the grass, shining his flashlight on the ground. They walked outside. Regan nodded to the whitened butt of a hand-rolled cigarette. He picked it up and sniffed it. ‘Weed,’ he said, then looked up at Poynton. ‘Your smoker was out here.’
Poynton scratched his head. It did not make sense. None of it did. Who did his wife know who smoked dope. He could not think, unless of course she didn’t know him. For a moment he stared at Regan who in turn looked at the chief. The chief was looking at the dumpster. ‘That one yours, Jim?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
The chief nodded and spat tobacco juice into the alley. He lifted the lid of the dumpster. Mary Poynton’s crumpled body was squashed down in the garbage.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus Christ.’ Poynton physically reeled backwards. The chief looked down at her—eyes open, her head pushed to an awkward angle where her body was pressed up against the side of the dumpster. Her shirt was ripped open, left breast mutilated, and blood
was congealed in brown stains on her belly and skirt top. Regan stood and stared, then Poynton recovered himself enough to look again. For a moment he could not make out what had happened. Then he realized her left nipple had been cut off. Twisting away, he vomited into the grass.
The chief laid a hand on Regan’s shoulder, the young officer’s own face was paling to green. ‘Boy, go call the sheriff in Carnesville.’
7
OFFICER REGAN WOUND BLUE and white tape across the parking lot and alley, which led down the side of the jewellery store. Poynton sat in the doorwell of his car and listened to the wail of sirens coming up Highway 29 from the other side of town. Within minutes, three brown sheriffs’ cars pulled up, and Poynton noticed for the first time the people who had gathered on Church Street. Absently, he tried to think of the last murder that had taken place here. He had been born and raised in this town, before leaving for the army and the surf of California, then eventually coming back again. He could not remember a murder. Old Mack crouched down in front of him, with a crack of his aging knees.
‘Hang in there, Jimmy,’ he said.
Poynton looked at him briefly, face awash with grey, little lines of red prickling the edges of his eyes. The sheriff came over, a big burly man, with a low-slung Magnum on his right hip. His belly bulged over the band of his trousers and he could not do up the zip on his jacket. ‘Where’s she at, Mack?’
The chief pointed to the back of the shop and the sheriff looked down at Poynton for a moment. ‘This guy her husband?’
‘Jim Poynton.’
The sheriff nodded and crouched down. ‘Sir, I’m Van Clayburgh. Franklin County Sheriff. A couple of my dicks’ll be along in a minute. You figure you might be up to talking to them?’
Poynton gazed beyond him to the swirling strobe lights on the ambulance which had pulled over across the street, and said nothing. Two men in green overalls were crossing to where Regan stood by the tape. Clayburgh squinted at Mack, patted Poynton lightly on the shoulder and eased his bulk under the tape.
‘Not pretty, Van,’ Mack said, as the two men moved down the grassy alley to the dumpster, where the paramedics were waiting.
‘Don’t touch anything yet, fellas,’ the sheriff said. ‘Let my crime scene boys take their pictures. If this goes to Athens, I don’t want GBI dicks giving me horseshit about evidence contamination.’
The crime scene team arrived and began their work, taking photographs, dusting the inside of the back room of the store, but leaving the body of Mary Poynton in the dumpster until the ME got there. The medics had already confirmed their ‘obvious death determination’ and were standing around waiting for the ME like everyone else. Eventually, he arrived and ordered them to lift the body on to the gurney so he could begin his work. Mack and Clayburgh stood to one side, Mack’s tired jaws working at his tobacco. Every now and then he would spray a thin green jet of juice into the grass.
‘Been chief of police for twenty-nine years, Van,’ he said. ‘Ain’t never had a murder in this town, not in all that time.’
‘You any idea who might’ve done it?’
Mack shook his shoulders. ‘Nope. Boy Regan, there, reckons somebody was smoking dope, though.’
‘Dope?’ Clayburgh scratched the red veins in the side of his nose.
Mack nodded. ‘Found the butt end of a reefer in the grass, right there.’ He pointed to the dumpster.
‘Sheriff.’ The medical examiner was on his feet, stripping off the tight-fitting surgical gloves.
Clayburgh and Mack walked over to him. ‘Make sure your man Regan talks to my dicks about that weed,’ Clayburgh said. He looked down at the body once more, lying flat now on the gurney. ‘What we got, doc?’
‘Strangled, I think. Ligature marks on her neck.’ The ME pulled a face. ‘I’ll be able to tell you more later, of course, but there’s one thing that bothers me already.’
‘What’s that?’ Clayburgh glanced behind him as he said it. One of his young detectives, wearing a dark, two-piece suit with his tie undone, walked up behind them, a notepad in his hand.
The ME nodded to Mary Poynton’s mutilated left breast. ‘I’ve heard about that before,’ he said. ‘I think you’re gonna need the GBI on this one.’
The sheriff eased his breath out in a sigh. ‘Yep. Kinda figured on that myself.’
Harrison leaned against the bar in the Jazz Café and sipped draught Budweiser from a ‘to go’ cup. He moved the lump of chew from his lip to the hollow of his cheek and scratched the rat tattoo on his upper arm, as he watched Maria swing her hips in that long slow loop that she liked to do when she was singing way down low. The rest of the band clicked on and Harrison closed his eyes. Her voice rose again and the strains of ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’ lifted above the hubbub out on Bourbon Street. The Sweet Sensation Band were playing, as they generally did, on a Sunday night. Maria finished up and came round with the bucket. Harrison dropped in a five-dollar bill and shifted his worn denim jacket to his other shoulder. ‘You gotta sweet voice, honey.’
She smiled at him and touched him lightly on the chest with red-painted fingernails, then moved on. He watched her from behind as she moved along the line of drinkers, ninety per cent of them tourists. Then he slipped his jacket back on and went out into the night.
Three cops were walking along Bourbon Street. Black guys all of them, from the Vieux Carre Precinct in the old bank building. One of them gave him a second glance as he wandered west and flicked his ponytail out of the back of his jacket, where it was stuck at the collar. He was watching Rene Martinez, part black, part Hispanic, from the projects up by Interstate 10 and the graveyards where the corpses were buried above ground. It was the first thing he had noticed when he came down here, or rather the first thing Lisa noticed. Hey, Harrison. Look. She had pointed to the cemeteries filled with white and grey stone, above-ground tombs. I guess the ground’s too swampy to bury people in.
Cochrane had confirmed it when Harrison was officially reassigned. He was Louisiana born and raised, served in the military, then spent twelve years as sheriff of St Charles Parish before joining the FBI. Dig a hole, JB, and it starts filling with water.
Harrison thought about Lisa now, as he watched Martinez bullshitting with a waitress from the bar on the corner. He leaned against a wall of the restaurant where the Recycled Cajun band was playing behind him. Accordion music in his ears, with the metallic slide of the skiffle board. He plucked a Marlboro from his shirt pocket and lit it, letting smoke trail from his nostrils, and watched Martinez trying to hit on the girl with no luck. She said one final word to him, then wandered away. Harrison looked back down the street as a mule-drawn sightseeing wagon trundled up behind him. Martinez was on the move again, walking down past the two NOPD Crown Victorias parked on the junction of Bourbon and St Peter. Harrison looked up, above the three-storey buildings of the quarter, beyond the wrought-iron balconies where revellers looked down on the street. The sky was smoky with cloud and he could smell the rain in the air.
Martinez took off down St Peter towards Royal. Harrison waited a half-minute or so and followed him. He was touring the bars, looking for someone. Harrison had an idea who that someone was, but he needed confirmation. Martinez was easy to track and this November night the French Quarter was humming as it was every night, save Mardi Gras, when you could not move on the street for floats and women showing off their titties, and pickpockets helping themselves to your hard-earned dollars. Harrison wore jeans, a faded jacket and the battered two-tone boots that he had bought years before in Idaho. Strapped inside the right one was his gun; nowhere else to put it when he was walking the quarter at night.
He watched Martinez in a bar on Royal, and sat there drinking Dixie beer with Franco and his girlfriend. Franco waited tables at the Café Sbiza and Harrison ate there at least once a week. The company was good cover, because Martinez had clearly increased his search and was looking over the tables with more care than he had done before. Harrison had his back to him, but
could still see what he was doing in the mirror behind the bar. He knew the rounds and could afford to take a little time here with Franco. After this, Martinez would do the first two bars on Decatur, and if they weren’t any good, he would end up in Jean Lafitte’s. That was the information and Penny’s sources were good.
Franco and his girlfriend left him then, telling him to meet them in Pat O’Brien’s later. Harrison said he might, but there was a poker game upstairs on Rampart and he might check that out for a while. The clock on the wall ticking towards one-fifteen told him it was time to go and follow Martinez. He worked out how long he had been in the bar and figured that he might as well try Lafitte’s right away. If he wasn’t there, he could walk on down to Decatur. Martinez was there and he was with the man Harrison recognized, but whose name he did not know. Dark-skinned Caucasian, could’ve been Italian or even Spanish. He had those nasal native tones of an Orleanian, which reminded Harrison of the street agents he knew out of New York City. When he’d first met Franco, he swore he was from New York; but no, he was New Orleans born and raised. A couple of guys in the office spoke the same way. Then there was Cochrane and one or two others who were from out in the parishes, with that southern drawl that Harrison liked to mimic so much. He sat at the bar and talked to Katie, who had just broken up with her boyfriend. Katie was young and pretty; Harrison more than old enough to be her father. He plucked a menthol-flavoured Merit from his shirt pocket and popped a match on his belt buckle.
‘You wanna Bud, Harrison?’ Katie asked him.
‘Thank you, Miss Lady Mam.’ Harrison cringed inside as he said it. He had thought that phrase was for Lisa Guffy only, but somehow it hadn’t turned out that way. He had known it wouldn’t work out as soon as they left Michigan. That had been vacation time, fishing the big lake as he had done with his grandfather years ago. They had a cabin on the shore and cooked the fish they caught on the barbecue, drank beer and talked deep into the night. But then there was D.C. and Tom Kovalski’s debrief with the domestic terrorism team, the commendation from the Director and all the fuss that went with it. The analytical research team proudly told him that the militia were running a poor-quality picture of him on their web sites, warning their number against infiltration.