by Rachel Ford
I’d heard the story a hundred times. He told it from the pulpit. He put it in his About the Pastor section on the church’s website. Two minutes of research would have put Andy’s alcoholism front and center.
If any research had gone into it at all. If Andy had been personally targeted.
Chapter Eleven
I worked until late afternoon, without making any headway. I could feel my frustration mounting. Not with the lack of results. I’d barely started, so I didn’t expect breakthroughs.
It was doing it at all that bothered me.
I got out of my seat and paced the room. I’d promised myself I’d never do this kind of work again. I’d never work on an active case. I’d never try to predict the movements of active players. Not again.
It was safe to work with the past. Whatever happened was done. Maybe I could build an algorithm that other people could use for prediction. Maybe I couldn’t. But I wouldn’t work on active cases. Not anymore.
I would stick to the past. Because analyzing the present to predict the future? That was dangerous. That had real world implications, beyond theory, beyond conjecture.
That could get people killed.
People are already getting killed.
I sat down again, and then got up. I walked the length of the room and back. The names cycled through my head. Angela Martinez. Mason Anderson. Andrew Welch. Shelby Dandridge.
People are already getting killed.
My phone rang, and the sound in the stillness made me jump. I decided I needed to turn the ringer down, or maybe off. I was too on edge.
But, later. For now, I checked the screen.
Incoming call from Megan Welch
I answered immediately. “Megan?”
“Oh my God, Owen, are you seeing this?”
“Seeing what?”
“The news: it’s all over the news.”
“What is?” She started sobbing, and I could feel my adrenaline surging. “Megan, for the love of God, what’s on the news?”
“The judge…ladybird…the note.”
I ran to the living room with Megan still on the line, and flipped on the TV and turned to the local channel. A prim faced woman was explaining, “At this time, we’ve had no official update from the police department regarding this development.”
I could hear the same voice, faraway and tinny through Megan’s end of the line. “What’s going on?” I asked her again.
She was still crying, but her words came out more coherently. “The note. Someone leaked the note. It’s—it’s so awful.”
“What?” I pressed. “What does it say?”
But I could get nothing intelligible from her. I was at the point of returning to my den to search for an article when the reporter’s head vanished. A photographic still showed up instead, showing a black and white page with three lines stamped out:
Ladybird, ladybird fly away home,
Your house is on fire,
Your children shall burn!
The note shook Megan badly. “I thought losing Andy was the worst thing that could happen. But to kill someone’s kids too?”
We didn’t know if Judge Dandridge’s kids had been home at the time, I reminded her. The cops had confirmed nothing yet, and reporters had only seen them taking one body away.
It was the only thing that made sense, she said. “Why pick a rhyme about burning children if you didn’t burn them?”
I didn’t have a good answer to that. It didn’t make sense any other way. But to burn a mother and her kids in their beds? That seemed an escalation of brutality that somehow didn’t fit.
Still, I did my best to console her. The police were on it; they’d figure it out sooner or later; and so on.
“What if he comes back? What if he comes back for the kids? Owen, what if he tries to kill them too?”
I didn’t share her fears. But they were real, and they were brutal. I could hear that in her voice. And I was sure the kids would hear it too.
“Listen, Megan: no one is going to touch you or the kids. Okay? I’m on my way, right now. No one’s going to get to any of you.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
She let me go after that. I shut the TV off, and shut the lights off. I unchained the door, and unbolted it, and unlocked it. Then I shut it and locked it behind me.
The interior of my vehicle had a faint sour milk smell, but not as bad as it could have been. I’d forgotten about flies, though.
And they’d shown up in droves. I was going to need to get the interior professionally cleaned and detailed after this. Even if the smell didn’t turn my stomach, the thought of a swarm of these harbingers of disease crawling all over the seats and dials and everything else made my back twitch.
For a long moment, I considered calling a cab. Then, I figured I might need wheels of my own. Even if they had been polluted. So I opened all the doors and did my best to shoo the little vermin out.
Then I got inside, rolled up the windows and started the engine. I plugged my phone into the charger and went to take the vehicle out of park.
But the sound of tires screeching and the dust of gravel rising from the end of my driveway stopped me. A second later, a vehicle shot down the drive, past my house and into the yard.
An old rusty Ford pickup truck. Jason Rathe’s rusty old pickup truck.
It ground to a halt at the end of the gravel, chewing ruts into the drive and throwing up a massive red cloud of dust.
Jason jumped out of the truck a second later and raced to the front door, hammering on it almost as hard as Edith had done earlier.
Apparently, he missed me, or the fact that I was watching him the entire time. I watched for a moment in fascination. Then I buzzed down my window. “Jason?”
He spun around, grabbing the door handle. He looked white as a sheet. He was panting heavily. “Jesus Christ.”
“I know: I’m going to give you a heart attack.”
“Fuck dude.”
“What are you doing here?”
That seemed to get him on track. He nodded briskly and ran to the driver’s door. “I think they’re coming after me.”
“What?”
“I’m like ninety-nine percent sure.” He paused, then shook his head. “Maybe ninety. Or eighty-five. But he followed me out of town. It’s got to be him.”
My mind went first to the Nursery Rhyme Killer, and then to Wyatt Wagley. The first could justifiably elicit this kind of reaction. But Jason had no way to ID the killer. So unless this was some manifestation of paranoia, it didn’t follow.
Neither did the Wagley theory. He was a pain in the ass, but no reason to be scared.
“Who?” I said. “Who is following you, Jason?”
“Some guy. I don’t know his name. But he works for a guy. A guy who…” He glanced around. The sound of a faraway engine floated down the road. “Who maybe I owe some money.”
I stared at him. “Are you serious right now?”
He was serious. You could fake fear to a certain extent. But not all over. And Jason looked scared from his head to his toes. “I’m not lying, man.”
The engine purred on, getting louder and louder.
“Who the hell is this guy?”
“I don’t know. I swear. He’s just – you know, kind of like my, uh friend’s muscle.”
“Who is your friend?”
Jason hesitated. The engine sounded very close now. It was slowing down.
“Who is your friend?”
“We’re not really friends. He…he supplies some of my medicine.”
“You mean, your weed dealer?”
“Among other things.”
“Jesus. And you owe him money?”
“A little.”
The crunch of gravel reached my ears. Jason started to move from foot to foot, almost like he was hopping over hot coals. “Listen, dude, these guys mean business. Maybe – maybe you could talk to him. Convince him to give me a little while longer
.”
“How much do you owe?”
A dark Ram pickup rolled into view, pulling up behind the Ford.
“Oh fuck,” Jason said.
I had two choices here. One was to leave, and let Jason sort out his own mess. This had nothing to do with me, after all. And maybe some consequences for being a fuckup would convince him to stop fucking up. It happened that way, sometimes. Not as often as people liked to believe, but it did happen.
Then again, a guy who’d been arrested as many times as Jason was no stranger to consequences. And if consequences hadn’t reformed him yet, well, I doubted broken bones would do much.
And the guy who stepped out of the Ram looked like he was on the bone breaking side of the distribution business.
He had a college football player’s physique, if the football player had started to let himself go. He was about six feet two inches tall, and weighed three hundred, maybe three hundred and ten, pounds. He had big, beefy arms that were just starting to get flabby. The same was true of his barrel chest. It sagged a little under his cotton tee, especially near the mid-section.
He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He looked like he meant business. His eyes fixed on Jason.
Which brought me to the second choice. I could intervene. The new guy didn’t look like he had diplomacy on the mind, but stranger things had happened. I doubted twisting arms had been his goal in life. Maybe he could see reason. Maybe he’d need to be shown reason. Either way, it would save Jason some trouble.
And trouble for the brother would mean trouble for the sister. Even if the kind of guy who would follow someone around to shake them down for money wouldn’t show up at her house too – and I wouldn’t have laid odds on that; even if the worst he did was rough Jason up; Megan sure as hell didn’t need that right now. She didn’t need another thing to worry about, another person to fear for.
So I took a step forward, putting myself in front of Jason. “Help you?”
The big guy glanced me over, and then looked past me. Jason shrunk a step further back. “Actually,” he said, “I’m looking for Mr. Rathe there. He hasn’t been answering his phone, so I’m checking in on him.”
“Well, this is private property, so you should leave.”
He looked me over again, slower and more dismissively this time. I knew what he was thinking.
I probably had the same amount of muscle mass as this guy at his prime. But it was harder to spot, because I was tall. Almost freakishly tall. I had three inches on him, which made a big difference in perception.
Smart guys realized you didn’t have to bulk up in equal proportions to your height to be able to pack a punch. Smart guys recognized a threat.
Stupid guys saw a beanpole. The big guy was one of the latter.
His lip curled up, and he said, “Listen, Ichabod, this has nothing to do with you. It’s private business. So I’ll be happy to get off your private property. If you can convince chickenshit there to get in the truck and go for a ride. To talk things out.”
“Hell of a wellness check,” I said. “But counteroffer: how about you get the hell in your truck before I call the cops.”
The big guy laughed, “Go right ahead.”
Jason grabbed my arm, hissing, “Jesus, Owen, you can’t do that.”
“Maybe Mr. Rathe can explain the trouble to them.”
“Come off it,” I said. “Whatever you have on him, he just buys from your guy. So we both know your boss isn’t going to turn himself in over – what? A few hundred dollars?”
“It’s not about the money. My boss extended Mr. Rathe a line of credit in good faith. Dates were agreed upon. Promises made. And you know what thanks he gets?”
I didn’t know, but I had a sneaking suspicion.
“Missed deadlines and ignored calls. Now, that’s no way to run a business.”
“No,” I agreed. “It’s not. Which is why Jason is going to pay what he owes. He just needs a little extra time.”
“He’s already got a little extra time. Twice.”
“I’ve been looking for work,” Jason piped up. “Honest, dude. Just – it’s hard to find an employer who is willing to accommodate my medical needs. I need to be able to take my medication during my shift.”
Probably, I figured, because Jason’s medication had to be smoked or snorted. “How much is it, anyway?”
“What? You going to pay for it?” The big guy laughed, but the lights weren’t all out upstairs. He was considering the possibilities.
“Maybe,” I said. Settling the debt seemed like the easiest way to make the problem disappear. The guy I wasn’t worried about. I could handle him easily enough. But I figured he couldn’t be the only washed-up tough guy turned low level muscle in town. And as much as Jason might deserve an ass kicking, guys like this weren’t above coming for family. And Megan and the kids certainly didn’t deserve to wind up in the middle of this.
“How much?”
The big guy looked at Jason, who shuffled beside me and them mumbled something unintelligible.
“What?”
He muttered again. I was pretty sure I heard a five.
“Five hundred.”
“Hundred?” The big guy laughed again. “Try grand. Five grand. Now, is this jack wagon worth five grand to you? And, to be honest, I can’t say I blame you if he’s not. But I got a job to do. So either I get the money he owes, or we take a ride and talk about his life choices.”
“I’m good for it, man,” Jason said beside me, his voice a low whisper. “I am. I mean, we’re family. I wouldn’t stiff family.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. But I had the money. And if this guy didn’t walk away with his money today, someone would be back. Maybe at Megan’s house. Maybe when I wasn’t around.
“I’m good for it,” Jason said again, louder this time.
“He’s really not,” the big guy said. “He’s a complete sack of shit. But how you spend your money is your business.”
“I don’t have it on hand,” I said.
“No I-O-U’s.”
“I’m not asking for one. I’d have to go to the bank.”
The big guy considered. “What’s your name, Ichabod?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
“It said Day on the mailbox. You some kind of friend of this yahoo’s?”
“Yes,” Jason said.
“No,” I said.
“Boyfriend, then? Fuck buddy? Whatever. It’s the twenty-first century and it’s a free country. It ain’t for me to judge.
“But let me tell you: if I give him a twenty-four hour extension to pay up, and he doesn’t…the gates of hell are going to open. So if this is some kind of bullshit, you think long and hard about whether you want to be in the middle of the shitstorm or not.”
The guy’s attitude was really starting to rub me the wrong way. But we’d almost made a deal; and I didn’t have time to find alternatives that didn’t involve Jason getting himself – or Megan and the kids – killed or hurt. So I said, “Look, if I say I’ll pay, I’ll pay. Now, do you want the money, or don’t you?”
He considered for a long time, then nodded. “Alright. But there’s going to be a service fee, on account of the delay. Let’s say twenty percent.”
I shook my head. It was one thing to pay what my sister-in-law’s dumbass brother owed. It was another to pay for the privilege of paying.
“No, there’s not. He’s going to pay you what he owes you, and then his business and yours and mine are concluded, for good. And if I ever see you sniffing around after that, I’m going to kick your ass.”
The big guy laughed out loud: a big, gut laugh. “You? Kick my ass?”
“You heard me.”
He took a step forward, slow and confident. “Well, why wait? Come on, Ichabod. Do your worst.”
I said nothing. He took another step toward us. Jason took a step backward.
“Or maybe I shouldn’t be involving you at all. Maybe I shou
ld take this up with that sister of his. What’s her name?” He took another step forward.
“Jesus, man,” Jason said. “Leave her out of it.”
“I’m sure we could come to some kind of arrangement. Especially now that her husband’s out of the way.”
He was about ten feet away now. He moved again, narrowing the gap to about seven.
“You say one more word,” I said, “and it’ll be the last thing you say for a very long time.”
He laughed and started to move. “I might even cut her a discount, depending on how much I like the arrangement.”
I hit him, hard and fast. He saw it coming just as I was lifting off my toes, closing the gap between us.
He saw it. But not quickly enough. He reversed course and started moving backward, turning as he went to sidestep the punch. I’d been counting on that. My hand connected with his jaw: his face going in one direction, my fist going in the other. I heard bone crack and crunch.
The big guy whimpered. Blood trickled out from between his teeth, and he staggered backward. But he didn’t go down.
I’d broken his jaw, as promised. But he wasn’t about to fold and give up. He was made of sterner stuff than that.
Which suited me alright. Someone had killed my brother. I’d had to chase off reporters and podcasters. And now I was dealing with Jason’s stupidity and a shakedown. I had a lot of pent-up anger to take out, and if this guy wanted to offer himself up as a punching bag?
I would have preferred Wyatt Wagley, but he’d do. So I struck again as he turned toward me, fists raised.
I’d taken him by surprise the first time. He’d misread me then. He’d taken me to be some kind of pencil-necked geek who got in over his head. Ichabod Crane.
Now he knew better. And he was no lightweight. He pivoted so the blow hit his arm, and he soaked it up like nothing. He came back with a blow of his own. A huge right hand, balled up into a tight fist, coming fast for my face.
I spotted the movement in his shoulder before the hand, which bought me enough time to get out of the way. But only just. Even with a broken jaw, he could move, and move fast.
I put two steps between us. He was heavy and in pain. His weight would work against him, and labored breathing would worsen the pain. Adrenaline would only get him so far.
