Killer Nashville Noir

by Clay Stafford

  I retreated a step. “Not happening.”

  “My offer’s open-ended.”

  Work for a guy who thought he was God’s gift to women? “Don’t hold your breath.”

  He grinned. “You’re all right, Powell.”

  I drove home in a mental fog. I’d thwarted a crook. There was a reward that I’d split with Charlotte. All in all, a decent day’s work. I’d trusted my intuition, and it saved me. Not as scary as dreamwalking, but I felt good about myself. Whole in a way I’d never experienced before.

  Maybe I really was one of those Nesbitts.

  REPRESSED

  by Jeffery Deaver

  What brought on the bad dream was, of all things, an old-time Buick.

  Sam Fogel wasn’t into vehicles, certainly not collectibles. The forty-two-year-old college professor leaned more toward chamber music and theater and poetry as diversions, not expensive, environment-wrecking technology. But over breakfast one spring Saturday, Janie looked up from the Meadow Hills Observer and pointed to an article, suggesting that he take the children to the fairgrounds to see the auto show.

  Sam had started to protest, but she added—in a tone he’d come to recognize—that it would be a good idea.

  “I guess.” Sam wondered why she was insistent. Maybe it was nothing more than to clear out the house temporarily to clean and cook. The couple was hosting a dinner party that night for the Abbotts, the Stones, and the Gales. Or maybe the Stoddards, the Grants, and the Jacksons.

  In any case, he decided, sure, he’d take Jake and Alissa to the show, if for no other reason than it seemed like something a father should do on a glorious weekend day with his teenage kids. It was that awkward cousin of a week—the third in May—between the end of classes and the beginning of tennis camp and cotillion, and the kids didn’t seem to know exactly how to fill their days.

  Sam had been pretty negligent in the parent department lately. Hell, for longer than that, he admitted to himself.

  So at 11 A.M., father and children climbed into the family SUV, and Sam drove through their pleasant neighborhood in Meadow Hills, North Carolina, filled with gardens tended to within an inch of their lives. Heaven forbid a rosebush should go renegade. Impulsively, he waved broadly and grinned to a man at a mailbox painted the same color as his house, pale blue. The man beamed and returned the wave.

  He doesn’t know me from Adam.

  Hell, I could be an estranged husband kidnapping the kids from their mother I just murdered, Sam reflected cynically. But this guy is grinning back like we’re drinking buddies.

  And why?

  Because he’s afraid he’ll give offense by not recognizing me or, worse, looking at me suspiciously.

  Because we’re in the South.

  Sam felt a moment’s guilt for baiting him, as he drove on.

  The car show turned out to be diverting, to Sam’s surprise. There were hundreds of old-time vehicles, beautifully polished and preserved, from dozens of makers. They walked around for a while, chatting with the proud owners of the cars and trucks and cycles and with the other attendees. They ate barbecue and shared a funnel cake. Sam had a rare lunchtime beer. Dozens of pictures of exotic BMWs and Triumphs and Porsches and NASCAR racers and motorcycles were saved on cell phones.

  But the good mood didn’t last long. First, there was a fight with Alissa. The girl was fifteen and only marginally interested in the esoterica of automotive history. She kept wandering off. Sam found her sitting on a fallen tree beside the woods that bordered the fairgrounds, texting her friends. He noted for the first time that she was wearing very tight jeans and a low-cut V-neck blouse.

  “Al, stay nearby,” he told her angrily. “That crazy guy’s out there.” There’d been two sexual assaults in the past month, not far from here. The attacker had broken into the victims’ apartments, gagged them, and tied them to their beds. He’d apparently identified his prey at a farmers’ market and another outdoor event, not dissimilar to this one.

  “Come on, Dad, could you, like, chill?” Apparently he’d delivered his warning a bit more stridently than he’d intended.

  “And put your jacket on.”

  She understood his criticism—and it wasn’t that she was risking a cold. Alissa offered an angry frown. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. It’s a woman’s fault if she gets raped. We should all wear burkhas.”

  He gave up.

  Jake enjoyed the show more than his sister, of course, but there was a to-do with him, as well. The exhibition became an excuse to drop none-to-subtle clues about the kind of car that Sam and Janie should buy him when he turned sixteen, in two years.

  “I’ll be happy to help you decide what car’s best,” his father said pointedly, “when you’ve earned up enough money for one.”

  Which put a damper on his son’s mood, too.

  It was at that moment that he spotted the Buick.

  • • •

  The vehicle caught his eye largely because it was by itself, at the edge of the show, in a U-shaped clearing, away from the rest of the cars, as if the exhibitor couldn’t afford to buy a space on the main drag. The color was a gaudy yellow with a brown vinyl roof; it stood out starkly in the shadowy area, where the grass was less trimmed and interspersed with patches of dirt and mud.

  He read over the information placard beside the front left fender.

  1963 Buick Wildcat

  The Wildcat was a sporty version of the Invicta, a mainstay of GM’s Buick Division in the late ’50s and early ’60s. The body is the Invicta’s full-size two-door “sports coup.” The engine is a high-performance version of the famous 401c.u. “Nailhead” V-8 which became known as the Wildcat 445 because it produced 445 pounds of torque. Horsepower was 325. The transmission is the renowned Dynaflow.

  This car was bought at auction in 2002, after years in storage, and restored to its present condition by Frank Killdaire, owner of Classic Restorations in Framingham, MA. 95% of the parts are original.

  His eyes swept over the car, which was spotless and gleamed wherever the sunlight, dappled by leaves, fell onto the chrome or the long hood or trunk. It drew him like a magnet. Why did this car, more than the others here, affect him so deeply?

  At that moment the wave struck him, a wave as powerful as cold ocean water. Sam was suddenly filled with dread and confusion and panic. He began to sweat at his graying temples, under his arms, down his back. His fingers were quivering. His vision went dark.

  Oh, don’t let me faint, not in front of the children.

  He bent down and stuck his head inside the Buick, on the pretense of examining the dash, which brought some blood back and allowed him to regain some composure.

  He stepped back and walked around the car, studying it from every angle. Breathing hard. What the hell was he feeling? What was there about it that drew—and bothered—him?

  “Dad!” Alissa called, startling him.

  He turned to her.

  “Can we leave? I’m going to Tiff’s house tonight, remember?”

  Sam looked at his watch and was astonished to learn that he’d been walking around the Buick for close to a half hour. It seemed like seconds ago that he’d first seen it.

  His daughter’s abrupt demand irritated him, and he might have snapped back, except that he also felt an urge to flee, to get away from whatever dark energy this car was emitting.

  “Sure,” he muttered. He called to Jake, who was admiring a motorcycle. His son didn’t want to leave, and he and his sister started squabbling. He shouted at them to shut up. They blinked in surprise at his fury. Several spectators glanced his way warily.

  One did not shout at one’s children in public. Not in Meadow Hills.

  They walked in silence to the exit, and just before they stepped through the gate, Sam looked back once more and caught a glimpse of the Buick, still by itself. But because of the contrast between the shadowy backdrop and the brilliance of the bold, jaundiced color, the car seemed to glow fiercely. Hostilely, too.

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nbsp; The feeling came over him again: part horror, part anxiety, part…what? Emptiness and regret, it seemed.

  But where those emotions came from, he simply couldn’t say.

  • • •

  Sam endured the dinner party (he’d gotten it wrong; the guests were the Abbotts, the Grants, and the Thomases).

  He was distracted and didn’t pay much attention to the conversation, most of which he found meaningless: the latest update about a new golf course soon to break ground in a town that already boasted seven good ones (Sam was one of the few men in the area who didn’t spend his time attacking a little defenseless white ball with a metal stick); a big charity auction next weekend; a fire at one of the dozens of country clubs. Someone asked if anybody had occupied Meadow Hills as part of the protest movement last year. There was hearty laughter.

  The volume dipped as they discussed a recent tragedy at the Meadow Hills High School. A murder-suicide. A senior girl had discovered that her boyfriend was cheating on her and had killed him, then herself. Sam had been deeply shaken by the incident, though he hadn’t known them or their families. Perhaps he was so moved by the deaths because the victims weren’t much older than Jake and Alissa and not much younger than his own students. At dinner, the guests had speculated on the psychology of the youngsters and the causes of the sorrowful event. It seemed to Sam that they had no idea what they were talking about, and he grew resentful of the pointless babble.

  The evening wound down and the last of their friends left—with their illegal roadie glasses that Sam had prepared (for some reason drinking while driving seemed to be more of a Yankee prohibition).

  A half hour later, he was in his skivvies and T-shirt and Janie had finished her extensive bedtime routine: shower and a leisurely wielding of a brush through her lengthy red hair. She rubbed cream into her hands almost obsessively as she stood at the window and looked out.

  Then she was easing into bed too, and he felt, along the length of his side, her aromatic body, athletic and taut (she golfed, and took the game seriously). The wind eased through the open window, cool breath rich with lilac and rose. Here they were, two people, attractive both, on the cusp of middle age and comfortable with intimacy, mellow from an oaky Chardonnay. Tonight would seem perfect for a liaison—particularly since it had been months since he’d been moved to initiate the caresses and kisses that would lead to more. But Sam found himself thinking about the yellow Buick more than his wife’s body.

  “Did you have fun at the show?” she asked after five minutes—when, he supposed, she’d given up on romance.

  “I did. It was interesting.” Then, he couldn’t resist: “Why’d you want me to go? You have a secret lover and you needed me out of the house?”

  He’d meant it as a joke, of course, but coming now, under these circumstances, her laugh was brief. “No, I wanted you out so you’d do something. Enjoy yourself. Have some fun. I didn’t want you sitting around reading.”

  “Moping, is what you’re saying.”

  Her silence meant, Exactly.

  “I read because it’s my job.”

  “You don’t seem to enjoy reading, though. Not anymore. You used to. And, half the time, when I look into the den, I don’t see you reading at all. You’re staring out the window.”

  “I’m thinking of lectures,” he lied. He usually wasn’t thinking about anything at all, except how tense he was.

  “Something’s wrong. Oh, honey, what is it? Tonight, at dinner. You didn’t want to be there at all. Everybody picked up on it.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “It was like you were rolling your eyes at everything they said. You’re so, I don’t know, edgy. Depressed. You’re that way all the time.”

  “No, I’m not! You’re projecting.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked angrily.

  Sam didn’t exactly know what it had meant; he’d just wanted to shift the blame to her. Yet he knew she was right. He’d always had problems with anxiety and depression, but the feelings had grown exponentially when they’d moved back to the South from New York two years ago. Sam had grown up in Georgia, but had moved to Manhattan after college and stayed. He’d worked his way up in academia and become an assistant professor at a private college on the Upper East Side. He was talented, but the budget crisis caught up. He knew he was going to be fired. He sent out resumes and landed a job as head of the European Literature department at Williams College just outside of Meadow Hills. He hadn’t wanted to return south of the Mason-Dixon line, but it was by far the best offer. The school had begun 150 years ago as a college for “proper Southern women”, and was now a small co-ed liberal arts institution with a good reputation, a solid faculty, and a student base that was about as diverse as one could expect in these here parts. The pay was good, too, and he was on a tenure track.

  So they’d moved. At first, he’d enjoyed the spacious house, enjoyed the beauty of the area, enjoyed the job, the quiet. But little by little his peace of mind began to erode. Meadow Hills was a small community, fueled by golf, tennis, church, and charity events, the major industries being real estate and interior design (Janie’s adopted profession). Life was, as he’d thought today, thoroughly superficial. There was surely a lot going on below the surface, but you didn’t see it. And probably didn’t want to.

  He tried to explain what he’d been feeling. “It’s just pressure at work, and dad’s having a tough time in the Home. And, I have to tell you, those kids…the murder-suicide? It’s weird, that’s weighing on me a lot.”

  Janie squeezed his hand, acknowledging his pain, but she wasn’t letting go. “I think you should go see somebody.”

  “What?”

  “A therapist.”

  “A shrink? No way.”

  Janie continued, “Just make an appointment. Have one session. What can it hurt? You can always quit.”

  “No,” he said bluntly.

  “My sister sees one. It’s not a disgrace.”

  “Your sister lives in New Jersey,” he said acerbically. “This is the South. People don’t go to shrinks.”

  “Well, maybe they should,” she said, her voice blunt, too. Then she relented. “Please, for my sake. For the kids’.”

  He thought about the car show, the fights. That was far from an isolated case.

  He expected her slow-boil voice. Instead, she took his hand again. “Honey, please. The old you’s disappeared. I want him back.”

  “I’m not going to any goddamn shrink,” he spat out.

  Proving her point, he supposed.

  • • •

  That night he had the dream inspired by the Buick.

  It was very brief, a fragment, really, but plenty disturbing.

  He was younger—probably teens—and was a passenger in the Buick, which was being driven by someone else. A man, he believed. But even though he couldn’t identify the person, he knew and liked him. They were driving through vivid scenery—brilliantly clear: canyons and rocky planes and even over water, which Sam knew for some reason was cold, ice cold. There was a huge urgency to avoid some invisible force or monster.

  That was frightening enough. But equally troubling was the conversation that was going on between them—a misunderstanding.

  “We have to!” the man was saying as he incongruously steered the Buick through spectacular clouds. “We have to get away.”

  “No,” Sam disagreed. “We don’t. It won’t find us. It won’t! It will only find us if we run. You don’t understand!”

  And then, to his horror Sam realized that the thing, the invisible monster, was in front of them and they were driving right toward it. He tried to jump out of the car, but couldn’t. The thing grabbed him. He started to suffocate and cried out in a loud voice, trying to scare it away.

  His mad groan woke him up.

  It was 6 A.M., and Janie’s side of the bed was empty. Judging from the twisted sheets and his sweat stains, he knew his thrashing had driven her to the guest room.

>   He lay back, feeling the unpleasant chill from the sweat on his skin in the dawn breeze. He waited for his heart to slow from the staccato pounding. For a moment, he believed he was going to be sick.

  Okay, he thought. I’ll go see a goddamn shrink.

  • • •

  “You can heal,” Dr. Brenda Levine told him. “I guarantee it.”

  It sounded like a line from one of those dreadful homemade TV ads for a local car dealership or lawyer, he decided cynically.

  They sat in armchairs in her dimly lit office, overlooking a wall of trees outside. No couch, he’d noted. Didn’t all shrinks have couches?

  Brenda Levine was a woman in her late thirties, with a kind, round face. She smiled often. She was a slim, attractive woman. Her suit was conservative and beige—you saw a lot of this color in Meadow Hills. Her dark hair was braided and reached halfway down her back. A few errant gray strands. He’d been oddly displeased to learn that she was a psychiatrist—an M.D.—which meant that she could prescribe drugs. He supposed she’d try to drug him into submission. Seeing a shrink was bad enough; to admit that his condition was so dire that he needed pills was unthinkable. (Southerners had their antidepressants, but they came from places like Kentucky and were served in glasses with ice.)

  Still, he hadn’t had much choice in selecting her. All the other therapists he’d found (more than he’d expected) were downtown or near campus. Sam Fogel couldn’t have that; he had to keep the therapy secret. Brenda Levine’s small office was a half hour from town, in a half-deserted office park off Highway 23.

  After her rosy prediction, Dr. Brenda—it was how he thought of her—had him tell her about his life and circumstances. He rattled off the statistics—no marital problems, two drug-free children doing well in school, a good job at a respected university, no abnormal financial woes, some minor family issues like a father edging toward senility. When he was done, he found himself embarrassed by the mundane litany.