The Broken Souls (Carson Ryder, Book 3)

by J. A. Kerley

  Nautilus returned a minute later with the drink. Logan took a sip of bourbon, spun the glass in his palms. His cowboy boots tapped his nervousness.

  “I was always happy as a street cop, Harry. It was good work that needed doing. Sometimes you had to think fast, but you didn’t have to think deep, y’know? I was comfortable with that. But then, time goes on. When you meet people, tell ’em, ‘I’m a cop,’ they’re like so what? Or, Hey, can you get a ticket fixed for me? But tell ’em you’re a detective and suddenly they’re seeing Kojak or Law and Order. It was an ego thing, the chance to make like something more’n a guy that drove around knocking heads and standing between people yellin’ at one another.”

  Logan spun the glass a long moment.

  “I’m not a very good detective, Harry. Not like you. It eats at me, sometimes.”

  “Pace, you don’t have to –”

  “It goes back to that night in the rain, Harry. Taneesha Franklin. That’s why I’m here, I think. To tell you a story.”

  Nautilus felt electricity sparkle up his back. Said, “I’m listening.”

  “Shuttles likes to cut me down like I’m a relic, telling me how law enforcement’s becoming so scientific …Did you know this about latents, Pace? Did you know that about DNA? Did you know satellites can track a car from a hundred-whatever miles up? Did you know the new generation of cruiser cameras can read license tags from four hundred feet away?”

  “I didn’t know that,” Nautilus said. “Maybe I’m a relic, too.”

  “Shuttles loves talking about all the new crime-solving hoo-hah: computers, cameras, geo-whatever locators – anything that makes me come off like a dinosaur.” Logan cleared his throat. “I say this so you’ll know I don’t like Shuttles – I hate the cocky little prick, Harry – but I don’t think I’m letting it mess with my judgment.”

  “I believe you, Pace. Go on.”

  “I was seeing a lot of the same scenery that night. Shuttles was driving and just cruising one quadrant of our beat. I said, ‘Come on, Tyree, move it around some.’ So he moved a couple streets over. I thought, Fuck it, the kid’s like a stuck needle. Then he told me how you’d been talking behind my back about what a lousy cop I was for screwing up that one case.”

  “Pace, believe me, I never said a thing like …”

  Logan held up a broad hand. “I know, Harry, leastwise I do now. Then the call came, you and Carson heading for the scene. But after all Shuttles’s goading I wanted to get there first, grab it from you.”

  “But after you got there, you turned the case over to us, Pace. Why?”

  “When I saw what had happened in that car, I knew you guys would do better than me and some fresh-from-a-uniform kid.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re trying to –”

  “I been thinking about that night, Harry. After you and me had our little scuffle, I was leaning against the Mazda to catch my breath. Then I saw a plastic bag floating in the gutter, riding high as a sailboat, just starting to get pounded under by the rain. It was about then Shuttles found the knife. Am I crazy, or does that seem strange?”

  Nautilus thought a few seconds. Saw what Logan was getting at.

  “It could mean a whole lot, Pace. Depends on the rain flow and where Shuttles was standing.”

  Logan sipped from his drink. “A couple weeks back I slipped two pictures out of the murder book. I wanted to refresh my head on the lay of the land. The rainwater was rushing away from where Shuttles had found the knife.”

  Nautilus looked at the aging detective, raised an eyebrow. “What you planning on doing with this observation, Pace?”

  Logan smiled sadly, slapped Nautilus on the knee. Stood and shook stiffness from his legs.

  “What I just did, Harry, hand it to someone who knows more than me. I’m probably just imagining things, but I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for the time and the drink.”

  Logan stepped from the gallery, headed down the walk toward his car. Logan got inside, fired up the engine, pulled away. I blew it, Nautilus thought, watching the retreating taillights. I looked at Logan’s bumbling and fumbling, filed him under Lazy, filed him under Dimwit. Instead, I could have said, “Pace, sometimes this stuff gets complicated; here’s an idea you might want to try …”

  CHAPTER 43

  It seemed late when Crandell stepped into the room, but it was closer to dawn. I hadn’t slept, thinking all night. He checked my restraints and I saw his watch: six a.m. I did the dopey-eyed look, moved slow as my heart beat fast. It had been hours since Miss Gracie had disconnected the IV tube, now running beneath the sheet and cover, dripping not into my blood, but the waste can beside the bed. Yesterday I had felt like a head attached to a rotting log. Now I felt muscles, ligaments, life and motion beneath my neck.

  “Figure anything else out, Ryder?” Crandell asked, tapping the half-depleted IV bag, letting his finger trail along the tubing. He started to push aside the sheet and check my shunt.

  I snapped my head his way. “This is all a setup, right? A major league piece of sleight of mind. Lucas isn’t a psycho.”

  It got his attention. He dropped the sheet and raised an eyebrow.

  “You’ve been thinking, Ryder.”

  I babbled a free-association of ideas stewing in my head for hours. Anything to keep his eyes on my face.

  “Lucas was acting out, a high-strung kid in a family of self-absorbed greed mongers. He may have taken youthful rebellion to the limit, but he wasn’t pathological. The brothers’ problem was Lucas’s brain. If he calmed down, Maylene might think Lucas was the one to hold the reins of the family businesses, not Buckie or Nelson or Racine, a trio of puddingheads.”

  Crandell winked. “Those puddingheads are smart enough to call me. Made me a rich man.”

  I said, “I know about the DuCaines, about Tree-house Boy. The family precedent for homicidal psychopathology.”

  Crandell shrugged. “It was a fucked-up family.”

  “Lucas’s brain threatened the brothers. So you or someone killed Frederika Holtkamp. Told Maylene that Lucas did it, that he had an obsession with Freddy’s teacher.”

  “If you found out about her killer brother, you know the old gal knew a bit about obsession.”

  “After Lucas escaped, you killed Taneesha Franklin …just in case Lucas made his way to Maylene and tried to convince her he wasn’t a maniac. Taneesha’s dead body said otherwise.”

  Crandell’s smile faltered.

  “Ms Franklin got wind of some of the dealings, little stuff. She played junior reporter, going to the KEI offices and asking questions. What a dumb bitch. We used one of old Buck Senior’s knives, a family heirloom.”

  “Lucas’s prints on it, of course.”

  “Easily done. Shuttles got us a picture of the murder weapon from a Forensics report. We showed Mama Kincannon the family knife in a photo on official Alabama Forensics Bureau stationery and she fainted dead away. She truly thinks Luke is the incarnation of Tree-house Boy.”

  “You killed Taneesha somewhere else, drove the car to the scene.”

  Crandell clapped his big hands and grinned.

  “Did it in an ol’ barn. Franklin talked and talked. She didn’t know squat, as it turned out, a waste of time. I made the car look like a robbery, drove it across town on a hauler, waiting for Shuttles to get there and plant the knife with the prints.”

  Just like a car hauler had picked up Lucas’s car after he’d been set up for the Holtkamp killing, Pettigrew’s tracks to nowhere. Crandell had taken a drug-addled Lucas to the field, made sure he was soaked with Holtkamp’s blood, then arranged for Lucas to be caught beneath the tower. He and the car were spirited away, and Lucas became a prisoner of the family. I recalled another discrepancy. The trucker Dell had described the Wookiee figure as apelike, but Leroy Dinkins had described Lucas’s build as tall and slender. Crandell was wide-built, with short and bowed legs. A simian body.

  I said, “It wasn’t Lucas the trucker saw.”


  Crandell patted at the sides of his head.

  “Ten-dollar Halloween wig-and-beard combo. Lucas never shaved in here, more youthful rebellion. When Mama read the police reports, she figured it was her boy indulging himself again.”

  “And you’re going to bring him back.”

  “It won’t take long. He’ll stay close. Mama’s still talking about keeping him here, putting more locks on the doors or whatever. But no more pussyfooting this time, Ryder.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  His grin went to a thousand watts. His eyes glittered with the wonder of himself.

  “Lucas is going to kill one more time, Ryder. But no more holiday at the Ritz. Mama’s gonna finally allow a complete lobotomy on Lukie-boy. We already got a Mexican doctor to do the digging.”

  Disgust roiled in my guts. The three older Kincannon brothers were going to turn Lucas Kincannon into a vegetable, ending the threat of his superior mind.

  “Who’s Lucas going to kill?” I said.

  Crandell gave it a two-beat pause. He looked carefully into my eyes, loving the moment.

  “Buck Kincannon’s girlfriend, Ryder. A pretty little blonde newslady. Ever met her?”

  Nautilus walked through the door of the Police Academy at eight in the morning. He’d been up until three, then grabbed a few hours of sleep, knowing his head had to be ready for what he might have to create. What was needed was confirmation, a sign that pulled it all together.

  These days the Academy was run by Major Dominick Purselli. Dom Purselli had been Shuttles’s training officer and might be able to fill in details on the kid, make sense of Logan’s story. Purselli knew Logan, the two were buddies, actually, and had been partners years ago. Like Logan, Purselli was something of an old warhorse, he just had a lot better temperament.

  Nautilus opened the door to Purselli’s office. A squat woman with wiry hair sat at his desk.

  “Hey, Alice, Dom in?”

  “He’s on vacation this week.”

  “Vacation?”

  “Somewhere up in Canada, moose country. Due back in a week. You teaching a class again this year?”

  “Trying not to.”

  “We’ll get you.” Her face fell suddenly. “Harry, about Carson …”

  Nautilus waved her words off.

  She said, “I know. Tough to talk about.”

  Nautilus jammed his hands in his pockets and walked past the Hall of Heroes, photos of officers who’d died in service to the force. There was a space for the next picture, the hanger already in place. He closed his eyes as he passed by, opened them as he passed twenty feet of displays honoring those who’d made some form of contribution to the Mobile Police Department, headed for the door.

  He snapped his fingers and spun, jogging back to the display case. There were plaques, photos, newspaper clippings. The items were arranged chronologically. When did Shuttles start? Nautilus checked dates, found the most recent. He saw a big wood-and-brass plaque with a photo of Nelson Kincannon mounted on it, the photo and a newspaper clipping coated with acrylic. Kincannon was canted toward the camera, eyes squinted above a big toothy grin.

  Nelson Kincannon was shaking hands with Tyree Shuttles.

  Feeling sweat prickle on his back, Nautilus read how, a few years back, Tyree Shuttles had been a recipient of the KEI scholarship for law-enforcement excellence, a recognition paying for all his college courses, and any living expenses incurred, and granting him a “Merit Endowment” of fifty thousand dollars.

  One hand gives …

  CHAPTER 44

  “You’re a liar, Crandell! Kincannon wouldn’t let you kill his girlfriend!”

  Crandell’s hand fell over my mouth. His smile was a mockery of humor, a twisted sneer, poisonous. He put his lips to my ear, whispered, “It was Buck’s idea, Ryder. Buck’s got a dark side like you wouldn’t believe. It’ll make Mama think old Luke’s taken a turn for the worst.”

  Crandell removed his hand from my mouth.

  “Turn for the worst?” I said. “Maylene thinks Lucas killed two women. That’s not bad enough?”

  Crandell chuckled, a hollow sound. “A spinster schoolteacher and a black junior reporter? To Maylene, that’s deer on the highway. By this time tomorrow, Lucas will appear to have killed Buck’s high-profile girlfriend in Buck’s house, way too up close and personal for Maylene. She’ll beg for that Mex doctor, get Lucas’s head roto-rooted so this nastiness never happens again.”

  “When is this supposed to happen?”

  “Tonight, Ryder. Lucas strikes again.”

  The door closed and I fought my restraints to no avail. I cursed myself aloud and repeatedly. I remembered Rudolnick’s hidden records describing a madman, a concealed sociopath on a downward spiral.

  It is like walking beside a normal and respected person who has decided to become a suicide bomber, never knowing when he will grasp the plunger.

  I’d figured Rudolnick was surreptitiously observing Lucas.

  He was observing Buck.

  “You want what, Harry?” Claypool said. He was wearing a tie-dyed ball cap, purple jeans, tire-tread sandals, and a black shirt with bold white lettering: ELECTRONS GIVE ME A CHARGE.

  Nautilus explained his needs.

  “That doesn’t take any thinking,” Claypool said, “but it sounds like fun. Lemme grab a soldering iron.”

  “Maybe some of the bubble-wrapper stuff, too,” Nautilus added, “like it just came out of a box. You folks got any of that?”

  Claypool looked about to swoon with delight and promised to send the package over within an hour. Nautilus made his office by nine. He wrote a few lines on a scrap of paper, then called Glen James from Tech Services.

  “That’s strange, Harry,” James said, studying the lines. “But I’ll be glad to help.”

  Nautilus went to the windowed conference room off the detectives’ room and unhooked the monitor and pushed it to the side, like it was being replaced. He saw an intern from Forensics wandering the floor with a brown package in his hand, waved him over. He set the package from Claypool on the table, then dialed Shuttles at his desk.

  “Hey, Tyree, this is Harry. I’m in Conference room A. Got a minute?”

  “Sure, Har,” Shuttles said, excitement in his voice. “Be right there.”

  Har, Nautilus thought. He recalled the movie All That Jazz, Roy Scheider popping a couple pills to kick off his day, smiling in the mirror, saying, “It’s show time.”

  “Show time,” Nautilus whispered.

  Shuttles bounced in the door and took a seat. Nautilus figured Shuttles had to be thinking the two would be paired as a team. It’s a terrible thing about Carson, Tyree, but I need a new partner, and I think we’d work well together …

  “What’s up, Har?” Shuttles was trying hard to hold in the grin.

  Nautilus kept the smile. But shifted his eyes to the ones he used for interrogations. Black rockets, someone once called them. Nautilus aimed the rockets through Tyree Shuttles’s pupils and into his brain.

  “Did you really think you’d get away with it, Tyree?”

  “Uh, what are you talking about, Harry?”

  Nautilus picked up the package prepared by Claypool. He pulled out an object protected by bubble wrap.

  “What’s that, Harry?” Shuttles asked.

  “You’ll know when you see it.”

  Nautilus removed the tape securing the wrap. A small slip of paper fell out, INSPECTED BY NUMBER 57, underscored by a line of bar code.

  Beautiful, Nautilus thought. He owed the multitalented Claypool a big dinner. Nautilus revealed a small assemblage of metal, plastic, and circuitry surrounding a tube like the front barrel of a rifle sight, a large optic glinting from the center. There was a mounting bracket. A cigarette-pack-sized control panel with buttons and LEDs. The ad hoc contraption looked like a sidearm from a Star Wars movie.

  “Now do you understand, Tyree?”

  “I don’t know what that thing is, Harry.” Shuttles co
uldn’t keep the scared out of his voice.

  “One of the new cameras for the detective cars.”

  “What cameras?”

  “Like the ones in the patrol cars, but the next generation. Pace never told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  “Pace and me met with the chief a few weeks back. We discussed who’d get the first one, the test camera. Brand-new super-high-resolution cameras, fifteen grand per. It was scheduled for your car, Pace having the most seniority. But Pace didn’t want the camera. So Carson and me got it installed in our car.”

  Sweat beaded on Shuttles’s forehead. He had the dry-mouth swallow.

  “Pace doesn’t tell me anything. He probably forgot. The asshole doesn’t care about this kind of stuff. He won’t even use a computer.”

  Nautilus went to the door, opened it, yelled, “Where the hell’s the monitor I asked for?”

  Glen James was standing across the room talking to Lieutenant Tom Mason, the head of the department. James glanced down at his cupped palm, reading from the script Nautilus had prepared.

  “On its way, Harry. Settle down. We can’t use a regular TV, it’s got to have the special screen. Like HDTV, where you see the pores on people’s faces. They’ll have it here in a few minutes.”

  “Hurry the fuck up.”

  “You gonna watch a porn flick, Harry? You’ll be able to count twat hairs, that much I can tell you.”

  Glen James, improvising.

  Nautilus slammed the door, sat back down. He rarely swore or slammed doors, making it that much more effective.

  “I don’t give a fuck about cameras, Tyree. What would I want with a picture of Taneesha Franklin’s car as we pull in? No one even looked at the tape until this morning. Hell, I didn’t even want to test the camera that night, all the damn rain, but you know Carson. He was playing with the thing like a toy.”

  “Franklin?” A tinder-dry whisper.

  “I want you to explain something to me, Tyree. Something that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. The camera’s on, it’s switched to extreme night vision, something to do with lux rating or whatever. A regular camera wouldn’t show jackshit, all that rain, distance. But this new camera is taking in everything.”