A Thorn Among the Lilies

by Michael Hiebert

  “She used a different spread than me. The one I use is called the Celtic Cross.”

  “What did she use?”

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t found it in my book.”

  “You’ve read one book and you’re reading my future?” Jonathon asked.

  “Almost,” Dewey said.

  “You’re almost reading my future?”

  “No, I’ve almost read the book. I have ’bout fifty pages to go.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s get this over with.”

  Like he did with me, Dewey flipped through the cards looking for a special one for Jonathon. He finally found it: The Knight of Cups. He placed it faceup in the center of the imaginary square he had going on between him and Jonathon.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “How come he’s a knight? And why is he a cup guy when I was a sword guy? I only got to be a page.”

  “I told you,” Dewey said. “This card represents who you are. The Knight of Cups represents Jonathon more than any other court card in the deck. The Page of Swords represents you more than any other card in the deck.

  “Please explain why?” I asked.

  “Please don’t,” Jonathon said. “Please just get this over with.”

  Dewey did as Jonathon asked and passed him the deck left to left like he did with me, asking Jonathon to shuffle them overhand as much as he wanted until he felt confident that he had imprinted himself on the cards. Surprisingly, Jonathon shuffled for quite a while, probably double the amount of time I had.

  “Does it matter if the card is upside down?” I asked Dewey. Four of Jonathon’s cards were upside down.

  “Yes, and their position and what the card is. Notice some cards have numbers like regular cards. These are called the Minor Arcana and are just like regular cards with court cards like the king, queen, and jack (except the jack is a knight) and one extra court card called the Page. They also have four suits just like regular cards except instead of hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs, they’re cups, swords, pentacles, and wands. There’s also a Major Arcana and these have numbers too, but they are special cards that aren’t part of the Minor Arcana or like anything in our regular deck. If you see here, Jonathon has three Major Arcana cards in his spread: The Hanged Man, The Empress, and the Wheel of Fortune.”

  “Wow, and you have to remember what all this means?” I asked, actually impressed.

  “It’s not that hard. It’s like telling a story.”

  “You mean you make it up?”

  “No, no. The cards tell the story. I just read it.”

  “Guys,” Jonathon said, “can we just tell my story and get it over with. I’d like to get back to that sofa.”

  “Okay,” Dewey said, “here goes. You like to take care of people. You feel blessed and balanced, whatever that means. You like to look on the bright side of life. You are an all-around happy guy. The only thing that was missing from your life was a girlfriend and she found you, so now your life is perfect. Your relationship will do well especially if you take chances.”

  “See,” I said. “He’s just tellin’ you stuff you already know or want to hear.”

  “Not all of it,” Jonathon said. He was starting to get interested. Even Carry had come down from the sofa and was kneeling beside Jonathon now that Dewey had started.

  “Your carefree attitude toward life also affects your work, making you not such a good employee. You don’t really care about work and you goof off a lot. You’d much rather be puttin’ your time into things that are fun. The same goes with school, and your grades suffer because of it.”

  “Well, that goes for everyone,” I said.

  Carry patted the top of Jonathon’s head. “It’s okay if some bad stuff comes out. Nobody’s judging. Seriously.”

  “Despite all this,” Dewey continued, “you have an almost ‘secret’ project you’ve been working on to make money. Unfortunately, it looks like the project is gonna fail, but if you keep up with it, it won’t. Be patient with it and it will make you be successful.”

  Jonathon’s eyebrows shot up in complete surprise to this. I couldn’t tell if Dewey had nailed something right on a bull’s-eye or if it was just so off base it blew Jonathon away.

  “One thing you’ll have to watch is that you don’t like yourself too much or suffer from a fear of the future. You could easily fall into the trap of thinking about the past when things were good, especially when some of the money you expected to come through doesn’t come. You might begin to see yourself as a failure, although other people around you don’t agree. They see you as a king who has achieved much. Someone who has a tremendous family, married the woman he loved, and is very happy.”

  “See,” Carry said. “It ain’t all doom and gloom.”

  “In your later years,” said Dewey, “you slow down and take a break from everything to reevaluate your life, and you realize it really wasn’t so bad. You spend the final years of your life very happy with your wife and grandchildren, occasionally looking back and realizing what a topsy-turvy life you’ve had. Yet, given the chance, you wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

  They all waited for more, but no more came.

  “That’s it,” Dewey said.

  “I can’t believe how good you are at this,” Carry said. “You’re almost as good as Madame Crystalle.”

  “And you didn’t make any of that stuff up?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not a word of it.”

  “You sure,” I said, not quite believing him.

  “He didn’t,” Jonathon said. “There was enough in there that he doesn’t know about to prove he didn’t make it up.”

  “Wow. You really could do this for money. I mean, you’re good now. Just wait until you finish the book! Except you have to get cool cards with dragons or something on them like Madame Crystalle has. Maybe you can order them from somewhere.”

  “And I’d need something like rent money for a place to do it, Abe,” Dewey said.

  “Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that part.”

  “Anyway, I’m moving back to the sofa,” Jonathon said. “You comin’, love? Thanks, Dewey.”

  “Of course I’m comin’,” Carry said. “And yeah, Dewey, you’re amazin’.”

  “Absolutely my pleasure.”

  He was soaking up all this attention like a mop in a bucket. I couldn’t believe the guy went out and taught himself how to tell the future. Who thinks of doing that?

  I guess the same type of people who think of running two hundred feet of aluminum foil around the house to get better television reception.

  “Like they say, there’s a fine line between insanity and brilliance,” I said as we walked down the hall to my bedroom.

  “What do you mean?” Dewey asked.

  “I mean that line that you trip over when you get out of bed every morning.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talkin’ ’bout.”

  “Oh, never mind. I’m just jealous is all. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “Don’t worry, Abe. One day you’ll be smart, too.”

  See? It’s like he just shifted gears from brilliant to extremely stupid. What were the odds now that I won’t strangle him in his sleep next time he spends the night?

  CHAPTER 55

  Leah went back to Corwin Strait’s place, this time carrying a search warrant. Once again, the man answered the door and Leah could smell guilt on him. But he had the demeanor of someone who was constantly guilty of something. Not necessarily guilty in this case.

  While Strait read over the warrant, Leah pushed past him and entered his shotgun-style house. It was a disaster area. It looked like a bomb of pizza and Chinese take-out boxes had gone off in his living room. No sign of anything menacing, mind you. Leah was looking for any clues that he might be hiding a woman somewhere with her mouth taped up and eyes sewn shut.

  If the living room looked bad, the kitchen looked worse. The smell hit her first. Rotten food that had long ago turned to mold littered the
room. Dirty dishes had overflowed from the sink and were stacked beside it on the counter. A bunch of cockroaches skittered away when they saw Leah coming; she almost threw up when she walked inside the room. Again, though, nothing suspicious. The man’s allowed to be a slob, providing he ain’t stashing away bodies.

  She checked the rest of the house and it was all the same. Lots of garbage scattered everywhere. By the time she was through searching thoroughly, she’d almost grown used to the sight of cockroaches and the smell of old food rotting away. Not a single decoration or even a Christmas tree stood anywhere in the house. There wasn’t even an empty cross hanging on any of the walls—at least none that Leah could see.

  “You a religious man?” Leah asked him.

  “Sure, as much as anyone.”

  “Yet you haven’t got a single cross on the wall or a picture of Jesus.”

  “My religious beliefs don’t concern you.”

  “I s’pose that’s true,” Leah said. “What ’bout Christmas? You have no decorations up. Not even a tree.”

  “Once again, Detective, my beliefs don’t concern you. Are you just ’bout done?”

  “Just ’bout.”

  Strait was still reading the warrant when she got back to the main entrance of the shack. She wondered how well he could actually read. “Now I need to check out your garage,” she said.

  “This warrant don’t say nothin’ ’bout my garage.” Strait’s voice had a very “hillbilly” sound to it.

  “Yes, it does,” she told him, and pointed to the clause that read she had the right to search anywhere on the property. “I plan on searchin’ the garage and your pickup.”

  “My pickup ain’t part of my residence.”

  “No, but it’s on your property.” She decided to check the pickup first, before he got the thought to drive it out to the street.

  The back of the pickup was caked with mud and dirt. She took a sample of it and bagged it, labeling what it was. There also seemed to be a dark red substance dried in the truck bed. “What’s this red stuff back here?” she asked Strait.

  “Blood.”

  Leah cocked an eyebrow.

  “Don’t get all excited. It ain’t human blood. It came from hogs. I sometimes use this truck to take hogs into town for Quinton Russell. Occasionally, I don’t let them bleed out long enough before loading them into the truck.”

  His story sounded plausible, but Leah took scrapings of the blood anyway, bagging them with the tongs from the CSI kit.

  “Who’s Quinton Russell?”

  “Lives down near Oakridge. Has a little pig farm. We go back a while. . . .”

  Leah assumed he was saying they met in prison.

  Next, she checked the truck’s cab. It was also a mess of fast-food wrappers and Chinese take-out boxes. She especially concentrated her investigation on the passenger seat, looking for anything that might be there as evidence. She found a long blond hair on the headrest. Very carefully, she took it and placed it in the evidence bag. It looked like it had the follicle still attached to it. If it did, it would be a tremendous find as far as DNA evidence went. Without the follicle, it was still good evidence, but it couldn’t be traced to an individual.

  “What’s that you’re takin’?” Strait asked.

  “Just somethin’ that I might be able to use as evidence.”

  “Evidence for what? I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”

  Last thing Leah did was investigate Strait’s garage. She figured if she was going to find anything of real value, it would be in here. As she walked inside and fumbled for the light switch, she thought Strait was starting to look a little antsy.

  The garage was empty. She supposed Strait only owned the one vehicle.

  Compared to the house and the truck, the garage was like a paradise. It was actually somewhat clean. At the other end, running from one side of the wall to the other was a long workbench, above which hung a number of tools. He also had drawers with sorted screws and nails and other things. It was like a completely different person lived out here.

  There was no oil patch on the concrete floor like there usually was in garages. “You ever bring your truck in here?” Leah asked him.

  “Sure, when she needs a tune-up. Mechanical work is my hobby.”

  “How good are you at sewing?”

  “What?”

  “You know,” Leah asked, “with needle and thread?”

  “Sewing’s women’s work. Why the hell would I be sewin’ anythin’?”

  “Just a question.”

  “Are you just about done?” Strait asked.

  “I am, but just so you know, I may be back.”

  “I’ll bake you a cake.”

  “Baking another of your hobbies?”

  “No, it won’t be a good cake.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Leah and Chris pored over the background checks Leah ordered on Mayor Hubert James Robertson and his wife, Susan Lee Robertson nee Susan Lee Williams, which came back with the rest of the fifty-seven background checks she’d asked for. It didn’t take Leah very long to see there was something fishy-smelling off the Gulf of Mexico.

  “Susan Lee was indeed in an automobile accident back in 1976 involving a drunk driver named Anna Marsh,” Leah said to Chris. “And just like our mayor told me, she was in a coma on life support at Providence Hospital in Mobile for twelve years.”

  “That poor guy,” Chris said. “I can’t imagine goin’ through somethin’ like that.”

  “Yeah, and from what I’ve heard, he came and visited her near on every day. But that’s not the interestin’ part of all this. The mayor told me the truth ’bout when they pulled the plug on her.”

  “That would be just horrible,” Chris said. “I don’t think I could ever get through it. It would drive me to alcoholism or somethin’.”

  “Or somethin’,” Leah said. “I think it did drive him to somethin’ actually.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Guess what date they pulled the plug?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Just take a wild stab in the dark,” Leah said.

  Chris shook his head. “Fourth of July?”

  “Close. How about September the fifteenth?”

  “Which was?”

  “The date the coroner estimated the first victim—the one found outside of Birmingham—was taken off the streets. Or pretty much thereabouts.”

  “What? No, let me see that.” She handed him the background check on Susan Lee Robertson and he sat there staring at it in disbelief for a good thirty seconds. “This can’t be right.”

  “It’s right, Chris.”

  “The mayor . . .”

  “. . . is our serial killer,” Leah finished. “He even told me the laws of this state had him irked because the person driving the other car only got five years. The maximum in the state of Alabama. I think his words were: ‘If only she’d been drivin’ in Georgia. The other driver would’ve got ten,’ or something to that effect.” She looked up. “He may even have used the word ‘bitch,’ I can’t remember.” She thought for a moment. “Chris, the timing is perfect.”

  He just stared at her in disbelief for a moment.

  “Can you get a picture of the drunk driving woman who killed his wife?”

  “Probably, but it would take a while.”

  “I bet dollars to donuts she looks like all three of our victims so far. I mean, think ’bout it. They all match. They’re all in their late twenties, with long, thick blond hair. They’re all heavy drinkers. It fits.”

  “You want me to go arrest the mayor?” Chris asked.

  “Not yet. What’s it say ’bout Susan Lee, his wife?” Leah asked.

  Chris read from the background check. “Just that she’s survived by her husband, Hubert James Robertson, daughter, Ginger Robertson, son, Paul Robertson, her sister, Luanne May Williams, her mother, Gina Williams, and her father, Alistair Joe Williams. Have you talked to anyone at the hospital during the time Su
san Lee was in her coma?”

  “No, but that’s an excellent idea. And while I do that, maybe you could do me a huge favor?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Go to the library and go through their newspapers back around the time of the car accident that put Susan Lee into the coma. I want a picture of Anna Marsh.”

  “Okay,” Chris said. “On my way.”

  Leah called Providence Hospital in Mobile, where Susan Lee had spent her last twelve and a half years on life support. She managed, after much asking and being passed from line to line, to finally be put through to a nurse who was around at that time. Apparently, she remembered Susan Lee and Hubert quite clearly.

  “It will be a while before I forget her,” the nurse told Leah. “If I ever do.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because her husband came and sat beside that bed for hours a day every day. Or at least most days. She didn’t even know he was here, yet for twelve years he kept coming, day in and day out. That’s some kind of commitment if you ask me.”

  “What sort of mood was her husband in? Was he angry about what happened?”

  There was a hesitation; then the nurse said, “No, if anything, the opposite. His manner was so calm and tender. He was full of love for his wife. He just wanted to see her come back. I think that’s what he was waiting for.”

  “What about when they finally took her off life support?”

  The nurse sighed. “Oh, that was a hard day. Many of the nurses cried. He cried, but not a lot. I think he realized it was best to let her move on. You know, he’d made so many friends among the staff—especially the nurses—that many came to her funeral. He’s a very special man. How’s he doing?”

  “He’s mayor of Alvin.”

  “Alvin. Is that in Alabama?”

  Leah rolled her eyes. “Yes, we’re a small town close to Satsuma. Got some good people.” And one that likes killin’ ’em. “He seems to do a pretty good job of runnin’ things.”

  “Sounds like him. He had a lot of charisma. I’m sure he had no problem getting voted in.”

  “Well, it seems like you’ve given me all the information I need,” Leah said. “Unless there’s anything else you can think of that might be of use to me. Any strange details?”