by J. A. Kerley
The door shut. Lucas squirmed from beneath the dumpster, pavement grease now added to his shirt and pants, pulled from a donations pile outside a Goodwill store. He’d left his institutional clothing with the other cast-offs.
Lucas clutched the purse to his chest and turned his eyes back to the ATM. Women afforded the best opportunities. But he’d take whatever fate provided and work with it.
He waited twenty minutes, only one vehicle stopping at the ATM in that time, a pickup truck with dual tracks and a stars’n’bars decal on the window. A good ol’ boy, Lucas thought. The type to keep a pipe under the seat. Or a gun.
Not worth the risk.
Minutes later a compact car entered the bank lot: a woman, driving slow. Lucas gathered the purse in his hand and threw it into the shadowy corner of the bank lot, twenty feet away. It landed as the car’s headlights washed over the pavement. The lights hit the purse, passed by, angled toward the ATM.
Slowed.
Stopped a dozen feet short of the ATM. Lucas held his breath.
Take the bait.
The car began backing up. Lucas raised to a crouch. Tensed his muscles. The car parked beside the purse. He heard the door locks snap off.
Lucas was up and running.
CHAPTER 3
The next morning I arose to a sky the color of unfired clay. Harry and I had worked until three in the morning, ascertaining what we could from the victim’s name and vehicle papers. Thunder rumbled in the distance, another storm cell rolling through. The phone rang as I was pouring coffee. It was Danielle Danbury – my girlfriend.
“Carson, can you stop by before work?” Her voice was somber.
“What’s wrong, Dani?”
“Please hurry.”
“On my way.”
Though Dani’s profession as a TV journalist made us natural adversaries, we’d been thrown into an uneasy alliance last year, tracking collectors of serial-killer memorabilia. The bizarre episode had taken Dani and me – I simply couldn’t use her on-air moniker, DeeDee – to Paris to interview an elderly art professor. While in the City of Light we’d become lovers, a condition that remained.
The erratic and overlong hours of our jobs made getting together more chance than certainty, and not counting sleeping, we grabbed maybe fifteen hours a week together. At least that had been the norm until a couple months back when Harry jumped into Logan’s mess and I’d played catch-up eighteen hours a day.
I raced down the steps of my stilt-standing beachfront home and jumped in my old pickup, making Dani’s house in twenty minutes. She was in reporter garb: good jeans, white silk blouse, burgundy linen jacket, strand of pearls at her neck, tiny matching earrings. Her blonde hair was lacquered, a concession to the cameras. She clutched a copy of Woodward and Bernstein’s book on Watergate, All the President’s Men, to her breast. Her eyes were red and swollen.
I stepped inside, my heart racing. “What’s wrong, Dani? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Carson. It’s a friend …she was killed last night. Murdered. I just read it in the paper.”
There was only one murder last night.
“Taneesha Franklin,” I said, reaching to hold Dani. “I was there. I’m sorry. Was she a good friend?”
Dani wiped her eyes, leaned back to look into my face.
“More like mentor and mentee, I guess. But she was a wonderful person.”
“She was a reporter?”
“For a tiny radio station, WTSJ. She was a newbie, spent her days covering city meetings, ribbon-cuttings, yapping politicians …the usual starter crapola. I’d had lunch with her a few times, Teesh asking questions about journalism, me answering. She was bright and dedicated and excited about her little reporting job. What happened, Carson? The paper had maybe four column inches. I can read between the lines. It sounded …brutal.”
“It was bad. Probably a robbery that went haywire.”
Dani and I hear so many lies in our jobs that we don’t lie to one another, not even the little white ones. Dani was still holding All the President’s Men. I tapped its cover, tried a smile.
“You’re about thirty years behind on your reading, babe.”
“It was a gift from Teesh. I told her my copy of the book was about to turn to dust, and she bought me a new one. She dropped it off a few weeks back. Read the dedication, Carson.”
Dani opened the book to the inside cover. I saw script in a neat and flowing hand.
To DeeDee …Who told me how things are supposed to work, and when they don’t, how to maul the bastards messing in the machinery. Love, Teesh.
“Isn’t that great?” Dani asked.
“Maybe a tad strident.”
“It’s how the good ones start out,” Dani said, a tear tracing her cheek.
I met Harry at the department and we went to the hospital. Last night we hadn’t been allowed to interview the trucker who’d discovered the crime scene – he’d suffered a heart attack – but he was now stable.
Arlin Dell was a strapping guy with about five bedside devices either measuring or dripping something. The doc gave us five minutes. I pulled up a chair, Harry leaned against the wall. Dell was pale, his voice light. He seemed a bit fuzzy, like on a mild narcotic.
“I’d just left the yard with a full load of electronic gizmos headed for Memphis. I cut down that side street, rain pouring, me wondering if it’s gonna be like this all the way to Tennessee, when I see this red car in the middle of the street. No lights. I jam on my brakes, about jackknife the rig.”
“You see anyone near the Mazda?”
Dell made a whistling noise, like laughing or choking. “An ape jumped out of the car, ran straight at my headlights, then cut to the side and jumped into the shadows.”
“Ape?” Harry said.
Dell said, “I climbed from the rig and looked in the car. When I saw what was inside, my heart grabbed in me like a fist. I made it back to the cab, called 911.”
“Tell me you didn’t really see an ape.”
“It was a hairy guy.” Dell patted his cheeks. “Furry face, long hair. Like an ape. Or the thing in those Star Wars movies.”
“A Wookiee?” I asked.
Dell shrugged. “Ape. Wookiee. Or maybe one of those guys from ZZ Top.”
“I hate a bearded perp,” Harry said as we left the hospital and aimed the Crown Vic for WTSJ, the victim’s employer. “The bastard shaves and he’s got a brand-new face.”
I’d been replaying Dell’s recollections in my head, picturing myself high above the ground in a cab-over Mack. “You know what really got me, bro? The perp ran straight for the rig, then juked at the last second, disappearing. He ran a dozen feet directly into the truck’s headlights.”
Harry tapped his thumbs on the wheel. “Headlights, engine rumble, windows like eyes …the truck should have scared the hell out of a guy just committed a capital crime. Standard response is haul ass the opposite direction.”
“Maybe he thought he could attack the truck,” I said. “Roaring on crack or PCP. Or maybe insane.”
“He’d already pitched his knife. It was on the other side of the vehicle. If he was going to war with the semi, he was going at it bare-handed.”
“Ballsy son of a bitch,” I said. “Or a full whack-out.”
“Never a good thing,” Harry noted. “Either choice.”
WTSJ was in a squat concrete-block building near Pritchard, a town abutting Mobile to the north. The receptionist’s eyes were shadowed with grief, but she forced a smile.
“Lincoln’s the station manager. He’s on the air two more minutes.”
She put us in a small anteroom. Lincoln Haley was in the adjoining studio, visible through a thick window. Haley was mid-forties, square-jawed, a neat beard. His forehead was high and protruding, like it was filled with songs. Racks of CDs were at his back. He wore a black headset and spoke into a microphone the size of a beer can. He saw us looking, flashed two minutes with his fingers, leaned over the microphone. Speakers fille
d the anteroom with his voice.
“ …coming up on the hour, time for Newsbreak. After the hour it’s the Queen Bee, Miss Pearlie Winston, bringing you the best in funk’n’blues in the whole United States …Now I’m gonna take you to the top with Marlon Saunders …”
Music kicked in. Haley stood, set the headset on the table, rubbed his face. A man worn past the tread. The studio door admitted a large and brightly dressed woman. She gave Haley’s hand a squeeze. He appeared in the anteroom seconds later, khakis, sandals, sweater, hands in his pockets.
“I’ll do anything if it helps find the animal who hurt Teesh.”
Through the glass I saw the woman put on the headphones, pull the microphone close. She took a deep breath, a big fake smile rising to her face.
“This is Pearlie Winston, queen of the funky scene …”
Haley reached to a switch, killed the speakers.
“Pearlie’s heart is broken, but she sounds like she’s about to break into song. It’s tough. Taneesha was like my daughter, everybody’s daughter. She was …w-was …”
“Tell me about Ms Franklin’s job,” Harry said. “At your own pace.”
Haley nodded, composed himself.
“We’re a small station, Detective. When Pearlie’s not on the air, she’s selling advertising time. When I’m not broadcasting or managing things, I’m the electrician. Teesh was our reporter, but sometimes wrote ads.”
“You’re probably not ripe for a takeover by Clarity Broadcasting,” I said. Clarity owned Channel 14, Dani’s employer.
Haley’s eyes darkened. “Everything Clarity touches turns to garbage; profitable garbage, but soulless.”
“Ms Franklin worked here how long?” Harry said.
“Started as an intern two years back. That girl had boundless enthusiasm.”
“Did she want to be a DJ or whatever, on the air?”
“She did the midnight show for several months. But talking between tunes was too tame for Teesh. Her dream was to be a reporter. Teesh had the aggression, the drive. She just needed more polish. I moved her into our tiny news department. You would have thought I’d given her a job on CNN.”
Harry said, “Was she working a story last night?”
“Not an assignment. But Teesh was always looking to break that big story, find something no one was supposed to know, putting the light on it. I told her we didn’t have money for investigations. But she thought of it as training, kept at it on her own time.”
“Self-propelled,” I said.
“Know who she wanted to be like? That investigator on Channel 14, uh, I can’t recall names …blonde, big eyes, kind of in-your-face, but sexy with it …”
“Uh, Danbury?” I said.
Haley snapped his fingers. “DeeDee Danbury. Teesh spoke with Ms Danbury a few times, asked questions. Teesh called her a kick-ass lady with a mind all her own.”
“I’ve heard that about Ms Danbury,” I said.
CHAPTER 4
We left the station and headed for Forensics. We walked into the main lab and found deputy director Wayne Hembree sprawled across the white floor, tie flapped over his shoulder, glasses askew on his black, clock-round face, one bony arm beneath the small of his back, the other flung above his head.
“I’ve been shot,” he moaned.
“Who did it?” I asked. Detectives get paid to ask insightful questions like that.
Hembree nodded to the far side of the room where an older guy in a neon-bright aloha shirt held a dummy gun and grinned like he’d just discovered orgasm pills.
“Not Thaddeus over there,” Hembree said. “From his angle the momentum would have flung me the opposite direction. My arm wouldn’t have been beneath my back, but across my belly.”
I grabbed Hembree’s hand, pulled him up. He brushed down his lab coat, made notes on a clipboard, then told the shooter they’d act it out from another angle in a few minutes. The Thaddeus guy flicked a salute, faked a couple shots at Harry and me, retreated from the room. Hembree scanned a report and gave us the preliminaries.
“Reads like a robbery gone bad. The car stops at the intersection, the perp runs from the shadows, busts the driver’s-side window, takes over.”
“Why the torture?” I asked.
“Motivation’s not my bailiwick,” Hembree said. “Maybe she said something that set him off.”
“Must have been a hell of a something,” I said.
Harry had been listening quietly. He stepped up.
“I got something feels off, myself. How long had she been dead when your people got there, Bree?”
“Under a half-hour, I’d bet. Your trucker saw the perp jump out when he arrived. Why?”
“The driver’s-side window, the busted one, was windward,” Harry said. “Close, anyway.”
Hembree frowned. “I’m not getting you.”
“I stuck my finger down on the floor. There was over two inches of rain there. I mean, it was raining like hell last night, but four inches an hour?”
Hembree frowned. “Rain fell in moving pockets, the storm-cell effect. If a string of cells went over that location, three or more inches an hour is possible. But a location a mile away might get an inch or less.”
“Makes sense,” Harry said. “One less thing to think about.”
I heard my ring tone, grabbed the phone from my pocket. The call was from the front desk at headquarters.
“This is Jim Haskins, Carson. You and Harry are leads on that robbery-murder last night, right?”
“Ours. What’s up?”
“Got a woman here at the desk who brought in her elderly mother. Mama’s wrought up, mumbling about a purse, an ATM and a longhair in her car. Thought you’d want to know.”
Harry and I arrived twelve minutes later, the wonder of a siren and flashing lights. The daughter was Gina Lovett, forty or thereabouts, plump and bespectacled. Her mother was Tessie Atkins, late sixties, nervous. She kept her arms tight to herself, as if cold.
“What happened, Miz Atkins?” Harry asked as we sat.
She tugged at her sleeve. “I had been visiting a friend at the hospital and passed the bank on my way home. I needed to pay bills. Maybe it wasn’t smart at that hour…”
“What hour, ma’am?” I asked.
“Almost midnight. It was late, but there was a restaurant next door, a fast-food place. It made me feel safer. I pulled in and saw something white to the side of the lot. At first I thought it was a cat or some poor animal run down by a car. But then I saw it was a purse. I thought someone’s purse fell out by accident. It happened with my wallet once in the lot at Bruno’s. Some nice Samaritan took it inside the store. I thought…”
“You’d repay the favor,” Harry said.
“I pulled next to it and got out to pick it up. The next thing I knew a hand was across my mouth and I was back in the car. It was a man with all kinds of hair, bad smelling. He got down in the passenger side, on the floor, and said if I didn’t perform to expectations, he had a gun.”
“Perform to expectations?” I said.
She nodded, arms crossed, shaking fingers clasping her shoulders. “He made me take six hundred dollars from my account and three hundred from my two credit cards. It’s my limit. I was too shook up to drive. He drove south of Bienville Square a few blocks and jumped out. I just sat there and cried until my hands stopped shaking. I don’t know how I got home.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“He took my driver’s license. He said if I told the police, he was going to come to my house.”
Mrs Atkins looked away. The daughter spoke up.
“I stopped by Mama’s this morning to pick up some sewing. She wouldn’t look at me and I knew something was wrong. She finally told me.”
We spoke to Mrs Atkins for a few more minutes, honed in on details, what few had registered beyond her fear. She consented to have her car checked by Forensics. Though sure the perp had made his threats just to keep her quiet, we made a quick call t
o the uniform commander in her district, requested his troops keep a tight watch on Mrs Atkins’s house the next few days.
“Bait,” Harry said, setting his can of soda on the hood of the cruiser, leaning back against its fender. “He used a purse as bait.”
“It’s brilliant,” I said. “Who can resist a purse? The good want to help, the bad see money and credit cards.”
We were parked on the causeway connecting the eastern shore of Mobile Bay with the city. Twilight was an orange lantern hung below the horizon of an indigo sky. Fresh stars shimmered in the east. A hundred feet distant, three elderly black men fished from lawn chairs, frequently consulting the brown bags beside them.
“After pushing her back into the car, he didn’t touch Mrs Atkins,” I said. “Didn’t lay a hand on her.”
“He threatened her with death,” Harry reminded me.
“He said he had a gun. Two hours earlier he’d just butchered a woman with a five-inch knife. Why didn’t he threaten to stab her, slice her? Why didn’t he ransack the car? And what’s with that ‘perform to expectations’ line? It sounds like a damn stockbroker.”
Harry looked south at the dark horizon, the mouth of Mobile Bay thirty miles distant.
“He probably tried the purse bit with Taneesha but she heard him running up. She closed the door, locked it. Maybe that’s what pissed him off.”
“Something sure did. How many wounds did Ms Franklin have?”
“Over thirty. But he broke her fingers first. I don’t get it. Why he’d kill one woman, two hours later give another a break?”
I forced myself to revisit the Franklin crime scene: the Wookiee breaking the young woman’s fingers, getting off on her pain, then going wild with the knife – poke, slash, jab. Then, interrupted by the sudden appearance of the semi, the perp bails out, runs wildly into the truck’s headlights, veers away into the night.
