The Broken Souls (Carson Ryder, Book 3)

by J. A. Kerley

  “How?” Harry asked.

  “His eyes. If he looked at you steady, you couldn’t see anything off. But now and then I could see rabies sloshing around, like it was pooling behind his pupils. Does that make any sense?”

  Yeah, I thought, if you’ve ever spent much time around psychos and socios. Many appeared as innocent as Salvation Army bell-ringers. But turn your back and they’d bite your spine in half.

  “What happened?” I asked. “To the problem.”

  “It all went away. Wifey stopped telling tales, the stack of bonds wandered home, a bit lighter. Happened fast, too. That’s all I know.”

  Harry stared at Walls.

  “So what’s your bottom line on having Crandell in our midst?”

  The lawyer tightened his tie, smoothed down the front of his jacket. I saw the talcum beneath his nails.

  “Someone around here’s got a problem, Harry. A big one.”

  We got back to our desks at five. We drew straws – broken pencils, actually. Harry lost and had to run to the Prosecutor’s Office to see what he could do about Walls’s request.

  I grabbed a cup of coffee that tasted like fried paste, sat at my desk and tried to encapsulate the day into computerized notes, e-paperwork: who, what, where. It was a creative exercise to write case notes making us seem smarter and more in charge than two guys jerked back and forth across Mobile County by indecipherable events spanning four years.

  A half-hour later I dropped my head to my hands and massaged my temples. I didn’t want to head home, didn’t want to stay at my desk.

  “Beer,” said something in my head, and I was forced to obey.

  I pushed through Flanagan’s door, took the window table beneath the neon sign that hummed. Harry and I always joked that it didn’t know the words. The place was almost empty, heavy traffic not due for another couple hours. The juke was silent, praise be. Though there was one song on the box that blew me away, a haunting old piece called “Wayward Wind” by Gogie Grant. Me and a retired sergeant from Records were the only ones who ever played it; he’d get tears in his eyes. I’d get melancholy, too, but the sweet kind. I have no idea why. I’d drop a quarter, play the song, and Harry’d look at me like I was crazy.

  I scanned the bar, a few desultory drinkers, one staring at me, a slender, broad-shouldered black guy, young, thoughtful eyes in a café-au-lait face.

  Tyree Shuttles.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he ambled over. Shuttles had been a detective for four or five months and still looked uncomfortable in plainclothes, absent-mindedly tapping the service belt he no longer wore, the street cop’s life-support system: weapon, baton, cuffs, ammunition, radio, pepper spray – twenty pounds of tools for every occasion. I’d worn what some guys called the “Bat Belt”, after Batman, for three years. Sometimes in the morning when dressing, my head thick with sleep, I still reached for the damn thing.

  Shuttles pulled up a chair and we small-talked cases and street monsters and the revolving-door system, standard cop time-passers. Shuttles was kind of a tech-head, telling me about new gadgets and gizmos in law enforcement.

  After a few minutes I asked how things were going with the Carole Ann Hibney case, figuring I’d pass the news on to Harry.

  Shuttles looked away. “It’s OK. Not much breaking, but we’ve got some leads.”

  “Leads like?”

  “Cellphone records for one. Regular johns. We’re going through them.”

  “We’re going through them, like you and Logan?”

  “Well, mainly me,” Shuttles admitted. “The tough part’s the interrogations, like you’d expect.”

  “Been there. You show up at a house and the john opens the door, with wife, three kids, and the family dog right behind him.”

  Shuttles started laughing.

  “What is it, Tyree?”

  “I got a guy aside from his girlfriend, asked where he was on the night in question. He said – and I swear I’m not making this up – ‘I think I was tied up that night, Detective.’”

  I started laughing, and we traded a few other funny cop stories. I had five more years in the department, so I had more stories, plus the time to develop them, get the timing right.

  Twice when a lull arose in the patter, Shuttles started to say something, seemed to think better of it, looked out the window. He finished his beer, said it was laundry night and he had to go shovel quarters into machines. He tried to argue me out of the tab, lost. We knocked knuckles and he drifted out the door.

  I looked at his back as he left, wondering what he had been trying to say.

  My cell rang as I stood to leave a few minutes later, thinking I’d follow Shuttles’s lead, go home and do mindless tasks until I fell asleep. I checked the number on the incoming call.

  It was Clair, her cell, not the morgue.

  “Hi, Clair. I was going to call you in the morning. Your lead on the victim from four years back looks tied to today.”

  “I hope it helps. You at home? Work?”

  “Flanagan’s, about to head home.”

  “I’m finishing up at the morgue,” she said. “Got a few minutes?”

  “Want me to call Harry, see if he’s available?”

  “Just you, please.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  I rang the after-hours bell, was let in by a security guard. It was quiet as, well, death, a lone janitor running a mop at the far end of the hall. Clair was at her desk catching up on paperwork. She gestured for me to sit, dropped her lanyarded reading glasses. She brushed aside a lock of black hair and sipped from a cup of hot tea, Earl Grey, judging by the scent of bergamot. Her eyes stared at me through wisps of steam. For a microsecond I felt whatever slender bond held us, a rustling of molecules in the air.

  “I’ve been worried about something, Carson. Debating with myself whether or not to…It’s never been my inclination to poke into people’s private lives.”

  She picked up a paperweight, a dandelion trapped in a glassy half-round, moving it from one side of her desk to the other with nervous hands, a rarity for Clair. She cleared her throat, took a sip of tea.

  “A few days back, after the Channel 14 soirée, you asked about a certain family.”

  I suddenly felt an odd dread. “The Kincannons.”

  “Yesterday you mentioned you’d split with your girlfriend, making reference to her taking up with another man, handsome and wealthy.”

  “The guy’s got everything,” I said. “And a spare everything in the trunk.”

  “Is it one of the Kincannon brothers, Carson?”

  “Buck,” I admitted.

  “Close the door, please.”

  I complied, returned to my seat.

  “Do you know much about them?” she asked. “The Kincannons?”

  “Until I spoke to you all I knew was the name. I’ve seen it on some plaques down at the Police Academy. But something came to light: Harry worked with Buck Kincannon and the K-clan foundation a few years back, building a little ball field for underprivileged kids. Then the Kincannons wanted favors in return. Big ones. They thought they could buy people’s integrity. They were dead wrong in this instance. But the kids lost their field, teams, everything.”

  “Not unprecedented,” Clair said. “Unfortunately.”

  “You’d know because the Kincannons were part of your old blue-blood crowd, right? The two hundred or four hundred or whatever constitutes the social register?”

  Clair tented her long white fingers, poised her chin at the apex.

  “Lesson time, Carson. There’s a social order in Mobile, of course. Old money at the core, old names. If it weren’t for many of those folks, the symphony, museums, all manner of cultural events would suffer. Many are honorable people, generous with time and money, others are insufferable prigs.”

  “The latter being the Kincannons?”

  “They’re not part of this group, sassiety types, as Harry calls them. Behind their façade, the Kincannons are coarse and cr
ude. Pariahs. True society types go out of their way to avoid them.”

  “I saw all manner of folks squirming after the Kincannons at the party, Clair. I didn’t see much avoidance.”

  “You saw politicians and sycophants, Carson. Old-line Mobile families wouldn’t invite the Kincannons to a weenie roast – not that they have them. That may even be a part of the problem.”

  “Not having weenie roasts?”

  “The Kincannons are shunned. In a coldly civil way, but ostracized nonetheless. It’s made them insular, self-absorbed. They pass out money hoping it will buy respect and acceptance, but they’re so heavy-handed and self-serving it only makes the insiders loathe them more. The public, of course, sees none of this.”

  “Negative publicity isn’t big with these folks.”

  “The family employs the biggest PR agency in the state, the toniest law firm in town, the caterer du jour does all their events, a photographer documents their every turn…”

  I held up my hand. “I don’t care for the clan. But I have a hard time picturing them being as malicious as you’re implying.”

  “The Kincannons have been playing at being benevolent and likeable for so long that they may even believe that story themselves. They abide social and legal compacts for the most part. Until something threatens their world. Then you see the dark side of their souls, the broken side. You never want to deal with that side.”

  “You’re saying they can be dangerous?”

  “When threatened. Or denied something they want.”

  “Clair, they’re just rich, selfish shits. Maybe you’re making too much of their power to –”

  “Shhhh. Listen to me. This girlfriend. Do you still care for her?”

  “I’m having a hard time telling her, but…I think so.”

  A strange moment of sadness or resignation crossed Clair’s face. “Warn her away from Buck Kincannon, Carson. From all the Kincannons.”

  I sighed. “I’ll do what I can, Clair.”

  She studied me for a few seconds, then turned away. I pushed to my feet and walked toward the door. At the threshold, I turned, remembering the other day, wanting to thank Clair for holding me in my moment of desolation.

  Her back was turned to me. She was looking out the window. I saw the reflection of her face against the night, like a white moon in a sky as lonely as a Hank Williams song. I started to speak but my heart jumped in the way.

  CHAPTER 28

  The next day, Wednesday, was a day off rotation. I’d arisen at eight, late for me, and spent an hour in the kayak, cutting hard through a low surf. I’d followed the kayaking with a three-mile beach run. I had to force myself to sit at the dining-room table and do a brief stint with Rudolnick’s papers. I’d put in a boring fifteen minutes when Harry called.

  “I’m thinking about running over to the Mississippi line, Carson, that little bass lake over there. You in?”

  I’d given a lot of thought to Clair’s warnings. I wasn’t convinced Dani was in true personal danger unless rising so high and fast in the Clarity chain gave her a nosebleed. Still, Clair was not given to cry-wolfing, and I figured I could combine some lax time with some learn time.

  “Thanks anyway, bro. I’m thinking about just getting out and driving. Maybe in the country. Roll down the windows and let the air blow my head clear, at least for a while.”

  I heard suspicion in Harry’s voice. “Where in the country? Not up by where Ms Holtkamp was killed?”

  “That was northeast,” I corrected. “I’m thinking more to the northwest side. Farm country.”

  “You being straight?”

  “What? You don’t trust me to simply take a drive?”

  Harry grunted and hung up.

  Farmland lay as far as the eye could see, melons and cotton and groves of pecan trees. I passed piney woods, trees rising straight as arrows pointed at the heart of the sky. The green smell of pine perfumed the heated air.

  Then the landscape changed, the woods at my shoulder becoming meadow wrapped with whitewashed plank fences, the land studded with water oak and sycamore, here and there a slash pine looming like a spire. The land seemed cool with shade.

  I had once passed through central Kentucky, the horse farms east of Paris and Cynthiana, where fences stretched to the horizon and thoroughbreds grazed in the lime-rich bluegrass. Only here in north Mobile County the champions were cattle, Brahmas, with minotaur-heavy shoulders and gray hides as sleek as seal pelts.

  Kincannon raised prize Brahmas. I figured I was close.

  I passed the hub of the husbandry operation, a half-dozen barnlike outbuildings, open doors revealing tractors and livestock trailers. There was a vehicle carrier with a small Bobcat-type dozer on its bed. I saw a feed silo, pens, food and water stations.

  I drove on, crossing a rise. Below was a stone arch like a segment of Roman aqueduct, a massive iron K affixed to the keystone. A guard house stood behind one of the pillars, almost hidden. The main house was a good quarter mile from the road, white brick, massive, plantation-style. White fence bordered the lane to the house. In the center of the sprawling lawn was a larger-than-life sculpture of a Brahma bull, golden in color, an outsize Kincannon K branded on its flank. The bull held a fore hoof aloft and glared toward the road like a challenge. The sculpture seemed an amazing exercise in hubris and I shook my head.

  I looked again and noticed a second house on the property, as large as the closer house, tucked back in the trees a quarter mile distant. I blew past the entrance, continued for several hundred feet, turned on a dirt road to the right. It appeared to be the western border of the property, white-fenced to the right, thick woods to the left. I lumbered to the side of the road and stared into the woods. The main structures would be on the far side of the trees, perhaps a quarter mile.

  I pulled field glasses from the glove box. Ten seconds later I was over the white fence and moving into the woods. I wasn’t sure of my motives, only that I had to see more, as if I could find a sign or symbol on the vast property explaining who these beings were. And why, having so much, they demanded still more. I pulled the glasses to my eyes and saw a snippet of the white house through the trees. I continued walking, then froze at a voice ahead, high and giggly.

  “You can’t find me.”

  I slipped behind a slender oak, put the binoculars to my face, tried to isolate the direction of the voice.

  “You’re getting warmer,” the voice said.

  A sound pulled my glasses to a large and chubby child crashing through the growth. He was perhaps two hundred feet away. I heard a small engine kick in.

  Then an adult voice, male. “Where’s Freddy at?”

  “You can’t find him! You’re getting colder now.”

  A game of hide-and-seek. The engine sputtered, moved nearer. “Where has Freddy gone?” said the adult voice, verging on anger, tired of the game.

  A childish giggle. “Over here!”

  The engine came closer. I dropped to the ground, wriggled beneath branches, flipped leaves over me as impromptu camouflage. The engine was loud and unmuffled and close enough to smell the exhaust.

  The machine stopped two dozen feet away. I saw a tall and lean man on a four-wheel ATV. He wore a nondescript brown uniform like that of a security guard. A semiautomatic pistol was holstered at his side. If he looked in my direction, there was no way he’d miss me.

  “You’re real cold,” the child’s voice giggled in the distance.

  “Fucking moron,” the guy muttered. He cleared his throat, spat, put on a playful voice. “I’m coming to get you, Freddy.”

  “You’ll never find me.”

  The guy cranked the throttle, and tore away. I let my breath out, stood on shaky knees, and began my retreat. I was halfway to the road when I heard a burst of laughter and returned the glasses to my face. Through the leaves I saw the man on the ATV, the chubby child at his back, holding tight with stubby arms, laughing. They were moving slow, puttering along.

  I focused t
he glasses tighter, saw a beard line on the child. Not a child, an adult. His face was small and round, his mouth wide with delight. I turned to the road and my foot caught a fallen limb. I crashed hard to the ground, a dry branch cracking like the report of a .22.

  The ATV engine revved hard, clanked into gear, started my way. I ran the last leg, clambered over the fence, jumped into the car. I fishtailed away, looking in the rear-view. No one at the fence line. But anyone caring to look would note the scrabbled-up leaves where I’d built my impromptu hidey-hole.

  Three miles down the road from my escapade I pulled into a small grocery store, thirsty. The clerk was a heavyset black woman in her forties, hair bleached yellow. Her name tag said Sylvia.

  “You’re pretty close to the Kincannons’ place here,” I said, snapping a package of beef jerky from the rack.

  “Yep,” she said. She shot me a wary glance. “You know them?”

  “Heard of them’s all. Hear they’re big with charities, that kind of thing.”

  “I guess.”

  “They ever stop in here?”

  “Some a the workers do. I saw a Kincannon once, the one called Racey.”

  “Racine?”

  She nodded. “He come in wit’ a bunch a his buddies. I think they’d been shootin’ birds or somethin’ by how they was talking. They’d been drinkin’, I smelt it soon’s the door came open. One says to the other, ‘I don’t care. If my bag’s empty after an hour, I gotta ground-shoot something.’ Then they all took to laughing and slapping backs.”

  “What’d they come in for?”

  “Pick up a couple six-packs, get rid of a couple others.” She nodded at doors toward the back, Restrooms hand-painted above.

  “Good to know rich people use the john like the rest of us,” I said, walking to the counter with my purchases.

  “Mebbe not like the rest of us,” Sylvia said.

  “How’s that, ma’am?”

  “They pissed ever’where but in the commode. Floor, walls, in the sink, acrost the stack of paper towels. Cleared out they noses on the mirror, too.”