The Body Box

by Lynn Abercrombie

  But that was gone. Jenny, even in her daze of weakness and hunger, didn’t really hope for anything else.

  But then there was a scraping sound, the door coming open, and something was set down next to the food slot. It didn’t clank like the metal dog bowl that her food was usually put in. Whatever this was, it made a clink on the concrete, like a regular plate. Jenny peered through the slot. And there it was: a bowl, a china bowl, sitting on a china plate, with a spoon, a piece of loaf-bread, and a wisp of steam floating in the air.

  Well. It was just dream food, that was all. For a second she had thought it was real, but of course it could only be a dream.

  But she reached through the slot anyway, pulled the plate in. The footsteps retreated from the room and the door slammed. The eye didn’t even bother looking in, and the light on the wall didn’t come on.

  The plate felt real, the spoon was cool to her touch, and the piece of loaf-bread that Jenny jammed in her mouth seemed just like real bread. Except it was better, the best loaf-bread ever made, an explosion of loaf-bread. And even in the darkness she could see the faintest gleam of liquid in the bowl.

  She dipped the bread in the liquid. It came out wet, and a bead of water shimmed and dropped, plink, into the bowl. It was soup! Soup! Beef bouillion, like her daddy used to pack in a thermos when he went fishing.

  She lifted the bowl and drank it like it was water. Food! Just the thought of it astonished her. Food. That meant things were about to change, didn’t it? Maybe the Eye was finally starting to like her. If he was feeding her, that meant things would get better soon. Didn’t it?

  Maybe this was all a punishment for something she’d done. And now that she’d learned her lesson, the Eye was about ready to send her back to Mommy and Daddy.

  For the first time in a long, long while Jenny Dial smiled.

  FIFTY

  The phone kept ringing. It rang and rang and rang and rang. Finally I answered. I was naked, lying in bed, the taste of last night’s beer in my mouth. I just wanted to sleep forever.

  “What!”

  “Mechelle? It’s me. Mark.”

  I grunted something, slumped back in the bed.

  “Mechelle? You there?”

  “Look, I couldn’t help myself. I was halfway done with the assays, I figured I might as well wrap them up.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You were right. It’s Diggs.”

  I sat up slowly. “I told you not to finish it.”

  “What are you so worried about?” There was a long pause. “Oh, my God. He got to you somehow, didn’t he?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was so full of poison and despair I couldn’t even talk.

  “What is it, Mechelle? What did he do?”

  What was the use of explaining? I just lay there.

  “Out of a hundred hairs, I got good solid DNA off of twenty-seven hair follicles. Nice uncontaminated samples.” He paused. “Six of them came back a perfect match. Eustace V. Diggs.”

  “We don’t know it was him.”

  “Yeah, we do. I’m a hundred percent sure that sample Goodwin gave me was Diggs’s.”

  “That’s not enough to prove anything in court. Not enough to even get a warrant. It’s over, Mark. If he hasn’t killed Jenny, then he’s going to soon.”

  The line was silent for a while. “Then you have to do it yourself.”

  “Do what?”

  “Go get her. You know where she is. You know she’s at that lake house.”

  “I know. I know. But . . .” Finally I broke down and explained what had happened, that the Chief had threatened my little boy—the Drobysches’ little boy, I had to keep saying that to myself—that I couldn’t do anything.

  “Come on. It’s an idle threat. The guy’s not superhuman. If he’s at his lake house with his family, then there’s nothing he can do to anybody up in Alpharetta.”

  “You gonna come with me?”

  There was a long pause. “Look, I’m not what you’d call a tough guy. I’m a lab geek.”

  I let the silence play on him, let him see what it felt like to go beyond talking about doing a thing like this.

  “Tell you what,” Mark said finally. “You go down there and try to find Jenny. I’ll go keep an eye on your little boy. I’ll bring . . . Well, I don’t have gun, but I’ve got a cell phone. I’ll bring a cell phone, and if anything weird happens, I’ll call the cops.”

  “Mark—”

  “I’m serious. I wouldn’t be any use to you at the lake house. You’re the action hero. Go down there. Do your thing!”

  I took a deep breath, sat up slowly. My head was pounding, and my throat had a sour, metallic taste. I lifted the corner of my miniblinds, looked out into the blazing morning. A white Crown Vic with black-walled tires was parked next to the curb. I couldn’t make out the face of the man inside—too much glare—but then I didn’t have to. I knew. “Excuse me a sec,” I said into the phone. I went in the bathrooom, set the cordless on the floor, dry heaved a few times, and sat down next to the toilet. I don’t know how long I sat there, my naked flank leaning against the cool porcelain, my head drooping down toward the bowl. It wasn’t like I’d actually had that much to drink. But I guess my body was rebelling against everything I’d put it through for the past couple of days.

  So this was what it had come to. Me, with my head in the damn toilet. My whole body had a shaky, achy, weak, wrung-out feeling. “I can’t,” I mumbled. “I can’t.” I was weeping by then, my self-pitying tears dropping into the water. “I just can’t.”

  “Sure you can,” a voice said, just a soft, sandpapery whisper from the other room.

  I looked up in shock. Even in my worst days, I’d never hallucinated before. But that was what it had to be—it was the only possibility. There standing over me, looking down, was Lt. Hank Gooch.

  “Tell him,” he said softly. “Tell him it’s okay. You’ll handle it.”

  I picked up the phone. “Mark? You there?”

  “Gosh, Mechelle” Mark said. “You scared the fool out of me. You okay?”

  “I’m okay. You go watch my baby.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll go get Jenny Dial.”

  I hung up the phone, looked up at Lt. Gooch. His cool blue eyes rested on me briefly, then looked away.

  “Lemme go get you some clothes,” he said. “You get yourself cleaned up.”

  “You’re dead,” I said vaguely. “How—”

  “I’ll explain later, darling. On the way down to the lake.”

  Darling? Did he just call me darling? Definitely, I was hallucinating.

  FIFTY-ONE

  But, no, Gooch was not a hallucination. Two hours later we were turning into a development off a county road near Lake Sinclair down in Baldwin County.

  “You got a plan here, Lieutenant?” I said.

  Lt. Gooch said, “Look, I think we getting to the vicinity of using first names. I’m Hank.”

  “Hank.” It sounded funny calling him by his name.

  “Hank, you got a plan here? Are we just going in with guns blazing?”

  “Nah, I reckon he’s liable to be on his guard right now. We go straight in, he’ll just blow us away.”

  “Then what?”

  “You gonna go in.”

  “Me?”

  “Look, we know what kind of man we’re dealing with. He’s ruthless, but he’s also a politician. He likes to talk, make deals. You come in talking about a deal, talking about saving your career, talking about some money, whatever you think will work. You’ll know how to play him better than I would.”

  “But what if he just shoots me?”

  “He won’t.” He smiled ironically. “I’d stake your life on it.”

  “Hah, hah.”

  “Look, Mechelle, right now he don’t know I’m alive. What we need is for you to go in and distract him. Just get him talking. Meanwhile I’ll reconnoiter, make sure he don’t have a bunch of goons hanging around. Once he’s distracted, I’ll come in and s
urprise him.”

  “What kind of surprise do you have in mind?”

  Lt. Gooch looked at me sideways. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.” Then he swung the car off into the weeds on the side of the road. He popped the trunk-lid remote, then climbed out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. As I scooted across the seat behind the wheel, the lieutenant was taking something out of the trunk: a short-barrelled Mossberg riot shotgun, and something else in a long, thin cloth bag. The bag was about the size of a baseball bat, but whatever was inside was shaped differently—lumpier, and slightly curved.

  “Give me about twenty minutes,” he said. Then he slung the cloth bag over his shoulder and disappeared into the woods.

  What was in the bag? I wondered.

  I sat there with the engine running, the air conditioner blowing full blast, the window open. In twenty minutes, not more than five cars came along the road. Heat shimmered off the sticky tarmac. It must have been close to a hundred degrees, the hot air pouring in through the window. I suddenly felt naked and alone, a craving for crank running through me so strong I almost couldn’t stand it. I had an odd, disconnected feeling like any minute this might turn out to be some kind of hallucination. But of course it wasn’t.

  So the lieutenant was alive. On the drive down he had told me what had happened. “You remember how we went in to arrest Ferlin Joyner two weeks ago,” Gooch had said, “that fellow that was living in the trailer up in Rabun County? You and me solved the case, went in for the bust, and then he disappeared. Well, the reason he disappeared is I told him we were coming. I knew he wasn’t the right boy in the first place, and after what happened with Vernell Moncrief, I didn’t want anybody else getting falsely arrested. So he’s been staying at my place for the past two weeks, laying low. Of course he had to split on short notice, so he’s been wearing my clothes. He’s the same size as me. He left in his bare feet, poor bastard was so scared. I even gave him a pair of my old boots.”

  Gooch had clenched his jaw. “Poor sumbitch, I got him killed. He must of heard them SWAT boys busting down my door, scared the crap out of him. He grabbed one of my pistols, they blew his head off. More or less literally. They expected him to be wearing a ballistic vest, so it was all head shots. Messed up his face so bad nobody even recognized it wasn’t me. They just threw him in the bag, trucked him on over to the morgue.

  “I heard on the radio what happened,” Gooch had continued. “At that point, what could I do, right? I figured well, hell, they think I’m dead, maybe it’ll give me a edge.” Gooch had tapped an electronic box on his dash, a row of little red lights on the face. “This here’s one of them cell-phone scanners, runs up and down the cellular frequencies. I just followed you around, listened in on what you were doing, figured I’d help out if I had to.”

  “No,” I had said finally. “It’s not that simple.”

  The lieutenant hadn’t said anything.

  “How long ago did you find that site, Lieutenant? The Captain Hunger site.”

  After a brief pause, he’d said, “About six weeks.”

  “But you never tried logging onto the Starvation Live section.”

  The lieutenant had turned left onto a county highway, frowning at the road.

  “You knew I’d get in there somehow, find Captain Hunger. You knew I’d get into that Starvation Live section somehow. And you knew that when I did, it would somehow trigger a more careful background search, one that would reveal I wasn’t who I said I was. Or that you weren’t who you said you were. Or whatever. And you knew that would force Captain Hunger’s hand.”

  The lieutenant had rolled down his window, spit some tobacco juice out into the hot wind.

  “You used me. You used me as a stalking horse,” I had said.

  “Wasn’t like I had some big plan. But when Ferlin Joyner got shot, and I knew that for a couple days I’d be invisible, well, I just improvised.”

  “You improvised with my life and my little boy’s life.”

  Gooch had driven for a long time, the hot wind roaring in our ears. “I ain’t one to get all personal and everything. But I been working by myself for a long, long time. Not used to letting other people into what I’m doing.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “Wait till you lose a child,” Gooch had said. “Then tell me.”

  I guess Gooch must have realized finally what he had said, must have realized that in my own way I’d suffered an echo of what he had.

  “I’m sorry,” the lieutenant had said finally. “I made a mistake.”

  I waited twenty minutes, then I headed into the development where Chief Diggs had his lake house. There are lake developments all over the state, and they all seem to have a similar feel: slapdash, cheap, everything thrown up at minimum cost. This was a better one than some—no double-wides, no half-built shells left by builders whose finances had tanked in the middle of construction, no bass boats full of rainwater and algae. But still, there was something impermanent and third-rate about it.

  The Chief had the biggest piece of property in the development, several lakefront lots and several roadside lots all strung together, so that the place was screened from the road by trees. I wondered if the Chief had brought down any guards—SWAT guys, or maybe people from his personal security detail. If I just drove up to the house, would I be gunned down before I could even get out of the car?

  I had a fatalistic feeling as I steered the cruiser slowly up the gravel road. A thick swirl of gray dust mushroomed up behind the car. So far, so good. No Captain Goodwin, no security detail. I kept both hands on the wheel so that any watching eyes would know that I was not holding a weapon. Maybe that would discourage any potential barrage of lead.

  Fortunately, bullets failed to materialize as I parked the car. For a moment I considered taking my pistol inside, but decided that wouldn’t be wise, that it might spook Diggs. I got out hesitantly, walked up to the door, and knocked.

  I was surprised when it was answered by an attractive woman of about fifty, her hair braided close to the scalp. She wore a bright yellow kinte-cloth dress. “Yes?” she said, looking at me curiously.

  “Mrs. Diggs?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for the Chief.”

  “And you are?”

  “Detective Deakes.”

  Her eyebrows went up in recognition, then she smiled graciously. “Oh. From the Cold Case Unit. I saw you on the TV with Eustace the other day.”

  I smiled blandly back at her. “That’s right.”

  She turned and called over her shoulder. “Eustace? Eustace. Somebody from the department here for you.”

  She asked me in and offered me a seat in the living room. The room was modest but tasteful, with nice reproductions of Thornton Dial pictures on the walls.

  After a minute the Chief appeared, wearing a pair of wet swim trunks and a polo shirt that was wet around the waist where it hung against the swimsuit.

  He turned to his wife. “My sweetest, would you give me and the detective a couple of minutes’ privacy?”

  “Of course, dear.” Diggs’s wife smiled pleasantly, kissed her husband on the lips. “I’ll be out on the deck, reading.”

  Diggs smiled until she had closed the sliding glass door onto the deck, then his smile faded. “You just don’t quit, do you?” he said sharply.

  I lifted my arms out perpendicular to my body and rotated slowly. “See? I’m not armed.”

  “Armed! What the hell wrong with you, girl?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” I sat slowly, keeping my hands visible. “You win. Okay? I surrender.”

  Diggs kept glowering at me.

  “What I’m saying is, I realize the error of my ways. I want to stay in the department. I got headstrong on you, I understand that. But I still think I can be useful to you.”

  Diggs stroked his face, then sat. “Talk to me.”

  “I have evidence now. Mark Terry, over at the GBI? He ran DNA on the hairs
from the crime scenes. All of them.” I paused, but Diggs seemed unimpressed. He just stood there looking at me. “So now we know. But, here’s the thing. Neither of us want to make trouble. We just want this whole thing to stop. It’s getting out of control.”

  Diggs’s face was still a mask. “DNA.”

  “Yes, sir. Hair. Blood’s one thing. Semen’s another. But hair, boy, it’s hard to hide all that hair, isn’t it? We came up with six matches.”

  Diggs kept looking at me with the same unreadable expression. Finally he smiled broadly, like he’d made some kind of decision. He clapped his hands together. “Okay, fine. We’re on the same page here. Monday morning we gonna sit down, you and me, we’ll work out the details. We’ll make a plan for you. Whatever you want and need and desire in that pretty head of yours, we’ll get it for you.”

  “Good.”

  “Excellent! Outstanding!” He stood, clapped his hands together a second time. “If that’s all you needed, a little reassurance, hey, then rest assured. Monday morning. We’ll work out the details. Pay scale, job assignment, you name it. Get it all squared away.” He was still smiling, a sort of strained, patronizing grimace. I could tell he was nervous.

  “Well, see that’s the thing. I need to leave here with more than just . . . reassurance.”

  “Monday morning.” He gestured to the door. “In my office. Eight-thirty sharp.” He waved his hand at the door a second time. I didn’t move.

  “See, sir . . . I need to know if she’s still alive.”

  He kept looking at me. He blinked. “She.”

  “Oh, for godsake Chief, you don’t need to play dumb,” I said. “I’m not wearing a wire. And even if I were, we’ve already got the hairs. I just told you, we got six DNA matches.”

  The Chief just kept looking at me with that blank smile.

  “Where is she, Chief? Is she still alive?”

  The Chief’s eyes slipped over toward the door for a minute, like he was thinking about going to get something. A gun, for instance. “You keep saying she. Mechelle, I’ll be honest here, you’re starting to lose me.”