Scorch City

by Toby Ball

  Frings nodded, thinking about the symbol painted on Ed Wayne’s door. “What about the girls?”

  “Girls?”

  “The dead girls … on the riverbank.”

  “Two girls?”

  “The two girls they found on the riverbank by the Community. The first girl, downriver, nobody paid much attention. This second, once the story gets out, will be trouble.”

  Womé put down his roll. “Two girls. Two girls when we are weighing the fate of an entire community. Are Negro lives really so lacking in value?”

  74.

  Westermann drove a rutted dirt road in the cool of morning, looking for what Allison had called “the colored trees.” Westermann had looked to him for an explanation and Allison had said, “Trust me.” Westermann still wasn’t sure what to make of it, but continued on, driving slowly, worried about the car’s axles.

  He was still unsettled from the previous night at the Holiness Church, the feelings that he had experienced there. He couldn’t find a purchase on it. It challenged his concept of himself. He’d felt something similar to this once before, in the aftermath of his killing Sam “Blood Whiskers” McAdam after McAdam had killed Officer Klasnic. Then he had been forced to face both his cowardice and his capacity to end someone’s life. It had been unpleasant. This, though, was something different, more like a reassessment of what had been his certainties about the world. Not damning like after McAdam, but maybe even more distressing.

  In this frame of mind, he rounded a curve in the road to see the sparkling of hundreds of points of shimmering color, as if a rainbow had dropped from the sky and shattered. He slowed further and came to a spot where an even more primitive dirt track branched off to the left. He could now see that the lights were actually hundreds of shards of broken glass in myriad colors, strung from tree branches.

  Westermann pulled off onto this new track and saw a shack in the distance. He parked as far to the side of the road as he could without risking getting stuck and covered the rest of the distance on foot.

  Glass shards dripped from trees all the way to the shack. The effect of their manic twinkling was nearly hypnotic; the sound of his footsteps on the dirt and rock of the road was unnaturally clear. Westermann felt exposed as he stood before the shack, a tattered structure that seemed constructed—or at least repaired—with whatever had happened to be around: logs, plywood, sheet tin, scrap lumber. The sturdiest part seemed to be a narrow porch that ran the length of the front, chairs scattered about it. Behind the shack, Westermann could see edges of a garden and hear the sounds of chickens coming from an outbuilding that seemed to be barely standing.

  “Hello,” Westermann called out to the shack. “Mr. Symmes? I’m looking for Mr. Symmes.”

  Westermann heard voices inside the house and the groan of the floor under footsteps. The front door opened and a thin man in overalls stepped out, holding a shotgun by the barrel; just to let Westermann know he had it.

  “Mr. Boyce Symmes?”

  The man had mottled cheeks and a narrow jaw. He looked to be in his sixties, the horse shoe of hair around his skull shaved nearly to the skin. He stared back at Westermann with suspicious eyes.

  “Mr. Symmes, I’m Lieutenant Westermann. Brother Allison sent me here to talk to you.”

  The man nodded, but didn’t move.

  “I’m hoping to talk to you about Prosper Maddox.”

  This time the man spoke. “Maddox?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You ain’t from around here.”

  “No, I’m not. I came up from the City.”

  The man nodded. “Well, I guess you might as well come have a seat.” He turned to the open door and yelled inside. “James, put some water on and bring us two mugs of coffee.” Westermann climbed three buckling steps to the porch, and Symmes nodded to a chair that he might have fashioned himself.

  “Maddox having his troubles in the City?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I’d put it quite that way.”

  “There were those—myself among them—that counseled him not to go. Even though he weren’t really Holiness Church anymore; at least not the way most of us were.”

  Westermann shifted in his chair, trying to get comfortable. “Can you explain what you mean by that, sir?” Wind agitated the tops of the trees and they creaked quietly with the strain.

  Symmes considered this for a minute. “I understand you attended the prayer meeting last night.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You see how things are. There’s leaders, but it’s not like the Baptist Church or what have you, where you’ve got a preacher. Maddox, he was a leader in our meetings. One of them. We also get traveling preachers from time to time, doing the circuit of Holiness churches. Well, a number of years ago, one comes by the name of Purcell. He comes and he preaches his message, and that is that we are in the End of Days, awaiting Jesus’ return. This is far from our usual fare, Lieutenant. In other words, End Times preaching just ain’t something we concern ourselves with. But Prosper, he was real keen on this.”

  A younger man emerged from the house, carrying two steaming mugs on a tray with his left hand.

  “Thank you, James,” Symmes said, not introducing Westermann.

  James was tall and broad-shouldered, but the right side of his face drooped and he limped badly. He was wearing a short-sleeve shirt and Westermann could see that his right arm was atrophied and he held it awkwardly to his chest. A large, solid-blue rectangle was tattooed on his right arm. Westermann took his mug and nodded his thanks. James nodded in return and limped back inside.

  “My son. The war,” Symmes said, and left it at that. “Maddox, like I said, was keen on Purcell’s preaching, and he took to studying Revelation and such. He’s a smart boy, Prosper. And he starts preaching Revelation at prayer meetings, and to be truthful, some people kind of wearied of it. Like I said, it’s not normally our concern. Eventually, Maddox started holding his own meetings, mostly for younger folks, but some older, too. My son was one. One day, this was during the war, Prosper says he’s moving the flock to the City. He’s got some places there or some such. So a couple dozen of them just up and left. Never looked back.”

  “Not your son?”

  “He was still with the army. Came back, his church was split in two.”

  “Was there any other reason why Maddox might have felt like he needed to leave?”

  The sound of a car approaching on the dirt road was suddenly audible. From the periphery of his vision, Westermann could see that James was standing in the doorway. He saw Symmes check the location of the shotgun. Nobody spoke. Westermann watched the approach to the house, the dirt track running between the trees, alive with colored glass.

  The sound came closer and the front of a police car became visible crawling slowly toward them. Symmes stayed tense, but didn’t move for the shotgun. The police car pulled to a stop fifty feet from the house. McIlvaine emerged.

  “Boyce. James. Lieutenant Westermann.”

  Symmes nodded. Westermann registered the tension.

  “Lieutenant,” McIlvaine said, “we got a call for you from a”—he consulted a piece of paper in his hand—“Detective Grip. Said he needs to speak with you. Urgently.”

  75.

  Grip and Morphy met a road-weary Westermann at the squad room. They filled him in on the information they’d received from the three prostitutes. They were gone now; Joan Draper to the hospital and the other two back to the streets. Westermann listened. They made it quick, walking with him, because the Chief was waiting.

  Grip told Westermann about the girl he’d sent to the hospital. “I asked them to get that doctor who’d looked at Mavis Talley to have a look at her, see if maybe she has the same thing.”

  “What do you think it means if she does?”

  “What?”

  They stopped in the hall. “What do you think it means? What does it mean if this girl Draper and Mavis Talley and Lenore, they all have the same disease, an
d they all got treated by Vesterhue, and Vesterhue says he’s paid to do it by Prosper Maddox’s church?”

  “I think it means that we have to get Maddox in here for a talk.”

  That wasn’t the kind of answer that Westermann had been looking for, but just asking the question helped him think some things through.

  The Chief’s secretary saw them coming and got out of his chair. “Piet, the Chief’s waiting for you.”

  The Chief looked up from his reading when Westermann entered. Kraatjes stood by an open window, smoking and flipping through the contents of a folder he’d propped against his chest. He tossed the folder on a chair, giving Westermann his full attention.

  Kraatjes said, “They found a third body last night.”

  Westermann looked from Kraatjes to the Chief and back again. There was no mistaking their concern. “The same place on the riverbank?”

  “Same place. Same MO as the second girl; strangled not drowned.”

  “Was she sick like the other girls? Did she have those sores?”

  Kraatjes nodded.

  The Chief said, “The cat’s out of the bag, Piet.”

  Westermann’s heart hammered. “What do you mean?”

  The Chief coughed into his hand.

  Kraatjes said, “The cops who were first at the scene were indiscreet. They’re part of Ed Wayne’s squad. We gave them hell, but they weren’t going to let this slide.”

  The Chief said, “We’re trying to figure out who they talked to, but word made its way to Truffant. He’s making an announcement to the press this afternoon and it’ll be ugly. It’s not going to be any better when he says that we’ve been spending resources harassing—that’s how he’ll put it—Prosper Maddox.”

  Westermann stared at the Chief.

  Kraatjes cleared his throat. “Piet, why don’t you tell us what the hell is going on. Why are you so intent on going after Maddox?”

  Westermann gave Kraatjes and the Chief the full picture. He told them about the connection between the girls and Dr. Vesterhue, and about how some of the girls had contracted an illness that had defied the admittedly lackluster efforts made at diagnosis. He explained the connection between Vesterhue and Prosper Maddox, specifically, how it was Maddox’s church that was paying Vesterhue to minister to the women. When he’d finished, he sat back and watched Kraatjes and the Chief exchange glances.

  Kraatjes got up from his chair and propped himself on a corner of the Chief’s desk so that they were both facing Westermann.

  Kraatjes said, “Do you have a theory about how all this information fits together; how it helps us find out who killed these girls?

  “I don’t have a theory. Not yet. But we’re making progress. The connection between Maddox and the girls through Vesterhue; the illness that several of those girls seem to share. This is a real connection.”

  The Chief asked, “Has anyone else—anyone who hasn’t seen this Dr. Vesterhue—been identified as having this illness?”

  Westermann shook his head. “Not that we’ve found.”

  “And you haven’t found Vesterhue?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have thoughts about that?”

  “I’m not sure. He’s missing.

  Kraatjes sighed. “So, the key person, the person who connects the murdered girl and these other, apparently sick, girls to Prosper Maddox and his church, this person is missing?”

  “Yes.”

  Kraatjes again. “That’s a problem.”

  “But that’s why it seems so suspicious, right? That the person who Maddox would most fear is missing?”

  “What are you implying?”

  Westermann shrugged. It was obvious what he was implying. “Things seem—”

  “Suspicious,” the Chief said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Remind me why we are putting so much time and effort into this case. There must be dozens of similar cases that go unsolved because we don’t put forth ten percent of this effort. Why this one?”

  “Where she was found. Maddox’s stonewalling.”

  The Chief nodded.

  Kraatjes asked, “What about the Uhuru Community? That’s where two of the bodies were found and the third was just downriver.”

  “We’ve been looking into that angle, too. But we haven’t turned up anything. The strong impression is that if it was somebody from the Community, that it would be a hard secret to keep.”

  Kraatjes and the Chief exchanged a look, unconvinced.

  Kraatjes said, “The first girl was drowned and the other two strangled. How does that play in your thoughts?”

  “I don’t know. It’s puzzling.”

  The Chief shifted, straightening in his chair. “Look, Piet, you realize the pressure we are under. If we go after Maddox and we can’t make anything stick—someone’s going to be held accountable, because when people look at this case, it’s going to seem to them that the Uhuru Community is the most likely place to find a culprit. And, Piet, they’ll wonder why the Community wasn’t the main focus of the investigation.”

  Westermann looked from Kraatjes to the Chief, wondering where this was going.

  The Chief said, “What do you want to do?”

  “Bring in Maddox and ask him some questions.”

  The Chief nodded; looked at Kraatjes. “Okay. We’ll bring in Maddox. I’ll call his lawyer. We’re not going to have Grip and Morphy rousting him at his church. And when he gets here, it will be you and Kraatjes in the room with Maddox and his lawyer.”

  Westermann nodded, feeling a surge, as if there was a chance to really get a purchase on this case. “Thank you, sir. One more thing.”

  The Chief raised his eyebrows.

  “I’d like to pick up Maddox’s muscle, Ole Koss. I want him out of the way so we can send a few detectives around the neighborhood; maybe get a chance to ask some questions without Maddox or Koss interfering.”

  “In for a dime, in for a dollar, I guess. Is this going to come back and bite us, Piet?”

  “I think this is the right thing, sir. I really do.”

  The Chief looked at Kraatjes again, then back at Westermann. “We trust your judgment, Piet. We trust your judgment.”

  76.

  Carla approached the front steps of City Hall, past beat reporters and photographers setting up below a podium placed at a landing halfway up to the front entrance. A crowd had begun to gather at the lower stairs, though it wasn’t clear whether they had been drawn by the newsmen’s presence or because they knew what was about to happen or they just wanted to stay in the shade of City Hall. A mustard-colored haze leaked out of the storm drains, bringing with it a sulfurous odor.

  Three youngish men stood smoking on the lower steps. One of the men, Carla realized, was watching her as she neared the steps. She identified him not by his face, which she had never seen up close, but by the attention he paid her and by his posture; the posture she had seen outside her apartment window earlier that day.

  Early that morning, looking down the street from Carla’s apartment, Washington had spotted Art Deyna, standing just inside an alley across the street, watching the building. Gerhard, her husband, had been incensed, storming down to the street and confronting Deyna, demanding to know where he came off staking out their building. Carla had taken advantage of the commotion and snuck Washington out a service entrance that would have been in the Deyna’s line of vision had he not been receiving a tongue-lashing from one of the City’s most prominent scientists. Afterward, Gerhard had said that Deyna’s calm had been unnerving—just taking Gerhard’s rant with a funny smile, then saying, “So Mel Washington is up there, correct?”

  Deyna winked at Carla as she passed. Startled, she brushed through the front door, greeted the guard briefly by name, and headed for the stairs at the back of the lobby.

  A small group had congregated outside Truffant’s office: two cops and three men Carla recognized as Truffant’s assistants. One in particular eyed her worriedly, knowing that Carla me
eting with Truffant could have no good outcome. That she was even able to get here was a result of her good relations with the City Hall guards, who were on orders that afternoon not to let the press or public down Truffant’s hall.

  Carla considered asking the two cops to tell her whom Truffant was meeting with, but decided against it, not wanting to seem anxious in front of his aides. Instead, she paced slowly up and down the hall, eyeing the painted mural of fabled politicians from the City’s founding up to the turn of the century—men with impressive brows and luxuriant beards.

  Truffant’s door opened and conversation spilled out into the corridor. Truffant was agitated, his voice pitched high. A man was with him, Truffant’s height but slim and pleasant-looking, wearing small, round glasses. Carla knew she recognized him and realized that it was Prosper Maddox. She watched Maddox shake hands with Truffant, patting the councilor’s arm with his left hand and leaning in to say some last thing. He pulled away and Truffant caught a glimpse of Carla. Maddox turned as well and smiled at her, showing no sign of recognition.

  Truffant excused himself, walked over to Carla, and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “Carla, how are you?”

  “I’m good, Vic. I was wondering if you had a minute.”

  Truffant looked at his watch. “I don’t …”

  “A minute,” Carla said with more force this time.

  Truffant reflexively looked to his aides, saw frowns and shaking heads. “For you,” he said, smiling, but reluctant, “a minute.”

  They walked past Maddox, who gave her the smile again, and Truffant closed the door behind them. He stood with his hands cupped together before him.