The Broken Souls (Carson Ryder, Book 3)

by J. A. Kerley

  “What do you suppose will come of this?”

  “We can only give him so much.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Wait and watch.”

  Later – no idea how long – I heard metallic clattering and opened my eyes to a black woman pushing a cart into the room. She was five-nine or -ten, slender and strong, her forearms dancing with muscle as she jockeyed the cart across the threshold. Her hair was pulled back. Her skin was dark and luminous, her face high-boned and classical, Egyptian. I read her age as early sixties. She wore a lime-green nurse’s uniform of jacket and skirt. White hose hissed over her legs. Towels were stacked on the cart beside a box of something called Steri-Wipes.

  The cart bumped my bedside and she snapped a towel open; no, not a towel, an adult diaper. She whisked the sheet from my body, naked save for a white bunching at my waist. I smelled urine.

  “You been sleeping past your bladder calls. I need to make a change so you don’t get the rash. Lift yo’ butt in the air.”

  The whole incident was so incongruous I couldn’t speak, but could lift a few inches. She removed a wet diaper, cleaned me off with a wipe, taped on a fresh diaper. All in under thirty seconds.

  “Where am I, ma’am?”

  “You’re in heaven.” She said it like she’d say You ‘re in a shoe store.

  “What?”

  She flapped the sheet back over me. “It’s the only name we’re allowed to call it, and the only answer you’re gonna get.”

  “Where the hell am I?” This time my voice was angry.

  “I got others to do for,” she said, checking her watch. “There’s a schedule.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Folks call me Miss Gracie. That’s always been enough for the others.”

  “What others? Where am I?” I called at her retreating form. But all I heard back was the clatter of the cart.

  Lucas sat crossed-legged against the wall, the Mobile Register in his lap. It seemed Detective Ryder had met an ugly fate.

  He read from the paper.

  …confirm that Ryder was an avid kayaking enthusiast who enjoyed rough waters. Records in the Mobile Bay Pilot’s Office indicate three freighters entered the bay during the period Mr Ryder might have been in the water, the Argentine Star, the Lady Hannah, and the Bali Pearl. The kayak, recovered on Ft Morgan point, was bent and scarred, the markings of a craft dragged beneath a barnacle-laden hull …

  Convincing, Lucas thought. But Crandell was an expert in convincing others of false events. Lucas closed his eyes and his head flooded with memory. Comets turning to flashlights. A strobing white light high above. Voices through a pre-dawn fog.

  “I saw something at the base of the microwave tower. It should be to your left; can you see the tower light blinking above the trees?”

  “Be careful. He’s …resourceful.”

  Resourceful? Hardly. But one learns from mistakes …

  Lucas shook the past from his head. Even if Ryder had died in a natural accident, things would start moving fast now. And if Ryder were alive somewhere, albeit temporarily? They’d move like a whirlwind.

  What was the advice his mentor had provided? His beloved teacher?

  “When a shitstorm starts blowing, cover your ass and figure a way to get your enemy to walk into it.”

  I heard a car pull close outside, tires crunching over gravel. Two minutes later Crandell entered the room, shutting the door behind him. He wore khaki Dockers and a polo shirt. A heavy gold watch wrapped a thick wrist. His arms were pelted with golden hair. He was broad-chested, tanned, powerful looking.

  “Hello, darlin’,” he sang in a raspy baritone.

  I stared at him.

  He said, “Now, I didn’t mean that as an endearment, Ryder. It’s a line from a song that goes –”

  “Spare me, Crandell. You have any idea of the prison time you’re racking up?”

  He clapped his hands and laughed like I’d shared my favorite joke. “What’s the sentence for abuse of a corpse?”

  “What?”

  He leaned close. “You’re missing and presumed dead, Ryder. You were blown by a storm into the path of a freighter. By the way, your little pointy boat confirms the story; it’s in real bad shape. Sorry ’bout that.”

  His breath was disgusting, like something in him was rotting. I turned my face away. He picked up a pencil on the table, began pricking my cheek with the point.

  “Question time, if you get the point. What do you know about Lucas?”

  “Lucas?”

  I felt the pencil point break my skin.

  “Ouch, Jesus.”

  prick

  “I’m moving up to your eye next.”

  prick, prick

  “He’s one of the Kincannon brothers,” I said. “The prodigal son, or something. He’s a psycho.”

  Crandell pecked the sharp lead randomly on my face as he talked: forehead, chin, nose, cheek.

  “Where is he?”

  prick, prick

  “How the hell would I know?”

  prick

  “What did Taneesha Franklin give to DeeDee Danbury?”

  “What?”

  Crandell swung the pencil in a roundhouse arc, like driving a knife into my right eye. I gasped. He stopped an inch short. I stared at the pencil point above my pupil. Crandell’s hands were absolutely steady. My heart hammered in my chest. Crandell set the pencil back on the table. He reached to his pocket.

  “I’m showing you two photographs. Tell me what they represent.”

  “I don’t know what you’re –”

  “Shhh. Two pictures. Ready?”

  He pulled a photo from his pocket. “Number one.”

  A long shot, Dani and Taneesha Franklin in the front window of a Waffle House, coffee on the table, pages spread between them.

  “If I recall, they’re discussing reporting techniques.”

  Crandell retrieved a second photo from his pocket, held it before my eyes. It had been taken in late afternoon, the shadows lengthened. Taneesha Franklin stood on Dani’s porch, handing her a small parcel.

  “What is Miss Franklin handing Miss Danbury?” Crandell asked.

  “A copy of All the President’s Men.”

  Crandell tucked the photos back in his jacket, then jangled the change in his pocket.

  “I want to know what Danbury got from Franklin. And where it is.”

  “It’s a fucking book. A gift. Have your boss ask Ms Danbury. Buckie-boy’s your boss, right? He hired you to put loony brother back in his pen?”

  Crandell grabbed the handles at the foot of the bed and whisked me from the room.

  “Come on, Ryder. I want you to meet a friend of mine.”

  I was propelled down a tight hall off the main room.

  “Who might that be?” I asked.

  He grinned and licked his finger.

  “Mr Ampere,” he said, touching his wet finger to my bare toe. “Buzzzzt.”

  Harry Nautilus stood in the covered loading dock of the Alabama Forensics Bureau and watched two interns pull the kayak from the Volvo.

  “Easy,” Wayne Hembree said. “Kid gloves.”

  “Kid gloves?” an intern laughed. “This thing is beaten like a …” He saw Hembree’s eyes. Said, “Where do you want it, sir?”

  Hembree gave instructions, then turned to Nautilus, his voice somber. “Harry, we’re all devastated. Carson was like a –”

  Nautilus put his hand on Hembree’s shoulder, squeezed.

  “Not right now, OK?”

  The interns set the kayak on a table that reminded Nautilus of an outsize autopsy table, a bank of lights overhead. Someone flicked a switch and the kayak was bathed in white light. The boat was bent like clock hands indicating 4.00. Hembree reached out and stroked the craft with a fingertip.

  “I’ve never dealt with a kayak before.”

  “You got one now, Bree. Learn.”

  Hembree looked across the room at one of the techs, a
young guy with an intense look, like he was doing math in his head and being timed on the results.

  “MacCready, you know polystyrene, right? Polymers?”

  The guy scowled. “I love plastics. Plastics are my life.”

  “Drop what you’re doing and give me a hand,” Hembree said. The guy walked around the boat until he found the manufacturer’s name. Aimed the scowl at Nautilus.

  “They still in business? The manufacturer?”

  “I guess so. The boat’s pretty new.”

  Nautilus tumbled through time, recalling when Carson had purchased the boat. He’d had a party, like a housewarming, except for a kayak. Carson set the boat in the living room on sawhorses, hung leis and Mardi Gras beads over its pointy tips. Everyone at the affair, thirty or so friends and neighbors, had to put a hand on the boat and offer a blessing of some kind.

  There was a fair amount of drinking and most benedictions were funny. Nautilus recalled being dragged to the center of the room by Danbury, his hand pressed against the boat. He’d never been good at speeches – hated them – and mumbled some things about winds and tides and friendship.

  No one laughed like they had at the other little speeches, everyone getting quiet. Several people wiped away tears. A tipsy Carson had hugged him. It was embarrassing and Nautilus had slipped outside to walk on the beach. When he returned the kayak was in the street, upside down on the shoulders of a dozen people, Carson riding it like a horse as folks waved tiki torches in the dark.

  What if those nights were over?

  “ …tensile strength and resistance and we might be able to …”

  “What?” Nautilus said, jolted into the here and now.

  “Talking to myself,” MacCready said. “I’ll give the manufacturer a call. They’ll probably have specs on tensile strength, resistance strength. Or can put me onto someone who knows.”

  Hembree looked at Nautilus, said, “I’ll call you when we have something.”

  Nautilus was almost out the door when Hembree called after him. Nautilus turned.

  “Get some sleep, Harry,” the moon-faced technician said, his eyes quiet wells of concern. “You look ter—pretty tired.”

  Nautilus pulled the Volvo from the loading dock. He drove six blocks before realizing it was raining and turned on his wipers. His stomach grumbled from not eating in over a dozen hours. A small seafood restaurant appeared in the rain and he pulled into the lot.

  “It’ll be a few minutes, babe,” a hefty, fiftyish gum-chewing waitress said, scribbling his order on her pad. She tossed the ticket to the cook behind the counter.

  Harry Nautilus put his elbows on the table and dry-washed his face with his hands. The restaurant was quiet and his thoughts loud, overwhelming.

  “You got a paper around?” he called to the waitress. “Something to read, anything?”

  She reached beneath the cash register, came up with a handful of newsprint, brought him the Register. He snapped it open. A page one headline read, Mobile Detective Missing, Believed Drowned.

  Nautilus pushed the paper away like it was on fire, threw a twenty on the table, ran out the door.

  My forehead turned cold and I opened my eyes. My guts felt like they’d been removed, beaten with jellyfish tentacles, stuck back inside. Miss Gracie was wiping my head with a cool, damp cloth. It felt wonderful.

  “You feelin’ all right?” she asked, looking into my eyes.

  “No.”

  She wrung water from the towel, refreshed it from a bowl of ice water on the bedside table.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  Miss Gracie patted the towel against my forehead, then folded it and left it laying.

  “Used to be they’d send people here to test us. Fakes. If we told them things we wasn’t supposed to, it could be real bad. If you were fake he wouldn’t have done that to you. I can’t do much, but I can at least give you a clean head.”

  “Where am I? And please, don’t tell me –”

  “You’re in a story. An’ I think it may be ending. Least the way it is now, the way it’s become.”

  “Story?”

  “I’ll come back later. Maybe you should know a few parts of the story. Sleep now.”

  I closed my eyes beneath the cool towel and drifted off. The next time I awakened, my pain had subsided and my vision was clear. I was still in bed, but someone had pushed me into a different room. Smaller. There was a steel door, closed, a slat at eye-height, also closed. The walls were covered in a thick, coarse-woven fabric, like old-time mats in high school gyms. A light was recessed into the ceiling, crisscrossed with bars.

  I was in a padded cell.

  Footsteps outside the door, slow and careful. No more electricity, I thought. Not now. Leave me alone.

  The slat slid open and eyes searched the room, found me on the bed. I saw a sock puppet beside the eyes and sighed with relief.

  “What are you doing, Carson?”

  “I’m resting, Freddy.”

  “You shouldn’t be in there, Carson,” he chided.

  “Why’s that?”

  “That’s Lucas’s room.”

  I heard a sound of hard-sole footsteps and Freddy scampered away. The door squeaked open. Crandell stepped into the room, his face bright with false bonhomie.

  “Whoa there, Ryder. You look like you been out partying all night long. You got to crank it back now and then, boy.”

  I mumbled curses his way. It made his smile brighter.

  “You was yelling some things while we were playing. Trying to make like you had it all figured out. It was fun to hear.”

  “I’m pulling some pieces together, Crandell. Like why you’re here. And what you’re protecting.”

  He walked to the side of the bed, raised a questioning eyebrow. “And just what is it I’m protecting, Ryder?”

  “The family’s reputation.”

  “Interesting theory. Make it go somewhere.”

  “Lucas was falling apart, decompensating. I’m talking four years back, when he was eighteen, when these sorts of problems usually present. The family knew about it, knew Lucas got the bad seed. He had a crazy uncle, Tree-house Boy or whatever. Insanity repeating in the family. But intervening in Lucas’s madness would mean …what? Committing him? Embarrassment? Bringing up sordid bits of Maylene’s history and humiliating her all over again?”

  The breadth of Crandell’s smile was unsettling. “Hang on a sec, Ryder …” he said, jogging from the room, returning seconds later with a chair. He sat it in reverse, arms crossed on the chair back.

  “I got to sit, Ryder. Listening to your theories is better than a movie. OK, keep going.”

  I glared at him and continued. “Then one day Lucas does the big wig-out. Kills Frederika Holtkamp. She was Freddy’s teacher. Freddy mentioned her name the other day.”

  Crandell nodded. “She was Fred’s teacher for years. Brought that boy a long way, I hear.”

  “The Kincannons knew Lucas was about to flip out, knew the signs well enough to stay on Lucas’s trail. They were too late, finding him under the microwave tower, covered with Holtkamp’s blood.” I lifted my head from the pillow. “Was that when they called you in for the dirty work, Crandell? To co-opt Barlow? It was your idea to pull Pettigrew to Montgomery, get him off the case, right?”

  “What’d make this movie perfect,” Crandell leered, “was if I had me some Milk Duds.”

  His grin was maddening. I said, “I know about Rudolnick, Crandell.”

  “Oh my. Do tell.”

  “I figure Mama K thought her boy could be brought back from the brink of madness. Rudolnick’s drug problem was probably known in a small circle. You found out, set him up for a fake bust. From that point on, he belonged to the Kincannons. Rudolnick consulted at Mobile Regional Hospital, right? The Kincannons give big bucks to MRH. Carrot and stick. One hand has money, the other can slip an arrest report into the system. Easy when you own cops like Shuttles, right?”

  Crandell clapped
his hands. Stomped his feet on the floor. “You ever think of renting out as an entertainment center, Ryder? You’re amazing.”

  “Rudolnick wanted out, conscience maybe. But that couldn’t happen, could it? Leland Harwood handles the disposal. He takes the fall, but a paid-off group of witnesses sends him on a light flight. He gets promised big compensation when he gets out. But he’s a loose end, a talker. You drop Tommy the Bomb on him.”

  Crandell shook his head, sighed. “I wish you hadn’t been at the prison that day, Ryder. This could all have been avoided.”

  “We would have dug you up, Crandell. Just from a different direction.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Answer me one thing, Crandell: why did Lucas kill Taneesha Franklin? Miss Grade keeps the music on during the day when no one’s here. WTSJ. Did Lucas form a bond by listening to her?”

  Crandell stood, picked up the chair. He was leaving.

  “Come on, Crandell,” I yelled. “Give me something.”

  He turned, a big smile on his face.

  “You got a couple things right, Ryder. But you ain’t near the core.”

  “What’s the core?”

  He winked. “This whole shitaree ain’t nothing more than a little family business. That’s all.” He checked his watch. “Got to be going. Business calls. Enjoy breathing, Ryder. You got about a dozen hours of it left.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Nautilus started to put music on, sorting through a stack of recently played CDs, nothing feeling right. He knelt to a shelf of vinyls, flicked through the titles, the musicians: Armstrong, Bechet, Beiderbecke, Coltrane, Johnson, Monk, Parker, Rainey, Spanier, Teagarden …a century of jazz and blues. Nothing sounded right. For the first time he could ever remember, there was nothing he wanted to hear. He fell into the couch and willed his head to stop thinking. Wait on the call from Hembree.

  An hour later his phone rang. He checked the incoming number: Forensics.

  “What you got, Bree?”

  “You don’t live too far do you, Harry?”