by J. A. Kerley
“It’s tough,” I sympathized, yawning. “But basic detective shoe leather. I usually start with interviewing neighbors, move on to—”
Cherry interrupted me by taking my hand. She led me outside, pointing to the west. “What do you see?”
I smiled, unsure of what was happening. “Uh, mountains, more mountains. Trees, valleys.”
“And all around us? East, North, South?”
“More of the same.”
“Woslee County is almost three hundred square miles of area, Carson. With a population under six thousand people. The biggest town is Campton, four hundred people strong. The tallest building is three stories. There’s two small apartment complexes, a few trailer courts. Most everyone else is scattered over the remaining three hundred square miles. People come and go as they please, no eyes around to see. Except for a few nosy-parkers, no one keeps tabs on anyone else.”
“Ah,” I said, getting her drift. “Not a lot of neighbors to interview.”
“It’s hard for urban folks to have secret lives; they’re surrounded by casual onlookers, curious eyes, surveillance cameras. They might have a hundred neighbors in a single apartment wing. In country as sparse as this, secret lives are a lot easier. Bobby Lee Crayline could have dated Tandee Powers for all I know. Or played poker at Sonny Burton’s house three nights a week. The thing is, no one would ever know. I can’t get that through Krenkler’s head.”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize.”
She kissed my cheek. “You’re forgiven. But only because you’re cute. I’ve got to take the sparse input on the vics and squeeze it like a stone, see if I can get out that little extra juice that turns the case. All in between Krenkler’s running me ragged.”
I went to the porch swing and sat, doing my part to revisit the cases. In my head I listened to people we’d interviewed, re-walked the murder scenes. Ten minutes later I was replaying my tag-along to Berlea Coggins’s house and the input from the Tongue.
“I want to visit Mr Tongue again,” I said.
“Miz Coggins’s daddy? I thought he bounced off Powers a few times and that was that.”
“I remember him saying he gave her up because she got too nasty for him. I thought he meant her lesbian tendencies. In retrospect, I’m thinking it would take more than that to be nasty to Coggins.”
“You think you can get the old letch to open up?”
“Reply hazy, ask again later. I’ll need to be alone with him.”
Cherry checked her watch, “Berlea’s been trying to get me to lunch or supper for eons. I know she wants to give me a good proselytizing. Maybe there’s still time tonight. That’s all you need … me to get her gone for a while?”
“I need pornography,” I said, building my plan on the fly. “Lots of porn.”
She shook her head. “You mean like movies? Pardon me if I’m naïve, but it’s not exactly my field of interest.”
“Movies. Magazines. Anything and everything. Magazines for sure. I need to flash them.”
“You mean Penthouse, Hustler, that kind of thing?”
“I need the ugly stuff. The kind of thing you can smell from across the room.”
“Jeez, Ryder, you’re making my stomach turn.”
I clapped my hands. “That’s exactly what I need. Got access to any?”
She tapped her chin with a delicate digit. “No local place would carry it, the church types would reach critical mass. I’ve found plenty porn in busts. Seems preferred reading at meth labs and among dope dealers. I carry the crap to the garbage bin with tongs, pitch it out. There’s an X-rated bookstore on Interstate 75, about an hour away. Or you can get it in Lexington.”
“No time. Not if we want to try today.”
I saw a light dawn in Donna Cherry’s eyes. She dialed her cellphone. “Hang tight, Ryder. If there’s any sleazy, greasy porno around, I know where it’s at.”
Cherry had planned to re-stock her fridge tonight until waylaid by new plans, so she ran off to do that while I scratched through the notes for the hundredth time. A half-hour later I heard a vehicle outside, opened the door. It was Caudill, carrying a paper shopping bag.
“Special delivery,” he said, looking embarrassed.
“What do you have for me, Judd?” I asked, rubbing my hands together.
Caudill pulled a six-inch stack of magazines from the bag, followed by a dozen DVD cases. “Sheriff Beale keeps a big batch of the porno we turn up. He goes through, selects out what he wants and hides it in an evidence box with a fake case number. Everyone knows it’s there, but the sheriff thinks it’s his big secret.”
“You have to get it back?”
“It’s a big evidence box. I don’t think he’ll miss a teensy bit like this.”
I looked at the material. On top was a DVD with a pair of leering women dressed as nurses, tight, low-cut uniforms overflowing with silicone breasts. The ladies appeared to be taking the air’s temperature with their tongues. The title was Oral Medication. The teaser proclaimed, Take as needed and as often as necessary! I shuffled through the rest, saw titles like Boob Madness. Anal Holiday. Pink Dreams. Spurtfest IV…
I shifted my attention to the magazines. Wet Candy. Bush Fever. Triple-X Panty Party …
“Pure hot raunch-a-roni,” I said, clapping Caudill on the shoulder. “Well done.”
42
We had a little luck for a change. Berlea Coggins was delighted to be asked to a restaurant by Cherry. We figured I had two clear hours with her daddy. I gave Cherry a bit of lead-time and showed up at the Cogginses’ house carrying a briefcase borrowed from Cherry. It bulged.
The old man opened the door and looked up, the oxygen hose dangling from his nose.
“Whatcha need?”
“I need to ask a couple more questions about Tandee Powers, Mr Coggins.”
He rolled backwards, invited me inside with a flap of his hand. “I told you ’bout Tandee. She loved this.” He drooped out the tongue again, let it flap against his collar.
“What woman wouldn’t,” I said. “Tell me more.”
“Ain’t nothing to tell. We got hot and we hooked up when we got the chance. In a car down a lonesome road, or a room in one of them gambling places on the river. We didn’t talk a whole lot, you get my drift.”
“Did you know any of her other friends? Zeke Tanner, maybe? Sonny Burton?”
His eyes flicked away. “I seen Burton a time or two. He was a big ol’ boy, mean in spite of all that toothy grinnin’. That’s all I knew. Tanner was a bigmouth preacher full of big talk. I know what ever’one else does cuz Tanner and Burton live around here. Or did. Listen, mister, I got my programs about to come on the TV. I gotta go watch.”
“Sure. Just one fast question before I go. Tandee was hot, right?”
Coggins did the open-close hand thing again. “That pussy loved to exercise.”
I leaned against the wall, crossed my arms and affected perplexed. “Did Tandee finally become too much for you to handle, Mr Coggins? You couldn’t satisfy the woman’s needs so you beat a retreat? I can understand how that might happen, you being older and—”
“Weren’t never no woman I couldn’t handle,” he snapped.
“I’m confused,” I said. “The other day you said Tandee had become too much for you. Those were your words. ”
“You need to get your ears cleaned out, mister. You missed half of what I said. I said she got too nasty for me. It ain’t the same as too much for me.”
“Too nasty for a man of the world like you?”
He frowned. “Some stuff ain’t right.”
“Gay stuff?”
He waved it away. “Tandee went both ways. I didn’t. But sometimes it put another woman in bed with us, y’know. Some mornings I’d get up and my tongue’d be too tired to talk. I’d have to point at things.”
“Tell me what Tandee Powers did. The stuff that wasn’t right.”
“I’m gonna go watch my TV,” he said, rolling away. “You gotta git.”
<
br /> I stayed at his side. The TV remote, universal style, was lying on an overstuffed chair. I swept it into my pocket, followed Coggins.
“Mr Coggins, I think there were a lot of things going on back then. A closed little world with a few people who got deep into sex. Drugs maybe. Gambling. Were children involved in any way?”
“I’m a sick ol’ man. Go away an’ let me see my shows.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, surrender in my voice. “Thanks for your time. Before I go, let me turn on the television for you.”
“Do that, wouldya? I can’t find the fucking remote. It was right here …”
While he patted beneath chair cushions I walked over to the equipment - monitor, DVD player, an old cassette player - stacked together on a shelf. Simple-looking gear, somewhat outdated, few buttons to figure out. Good.
I turned on the television while standing between Coggins and the equipment. I slipped a DVD from my jacket pocket, slid it into the player. I advanced the disk to an opening scene I found particularly artful. Hoping everything was set correctly, I pressed Play.
Wet sounds, moans, the hiss of flesh over sheets, low throbbing bass line marking time in heartbeat tempo …
Coggins’s head jolted toward the sounds pouring from his television.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
On the screen a man with a tongue nearly as prominent as Coggins’s was using it in the service of a twentyish woman with a truly amazing body and an unruly mane of blonde hair that shivered with every overblown moan. As if harmonizing, Coggins loosed a groan.
I hit Pause.
“Hey, keep that thing playing!”
I moved between the old man and the frozen image. “Been a while since you’ve seen anything like this, I take it?”
“I tried to get some hot stuff from mail-order,” he panted, eyes unwavering from the stilled action. “Goddamn Berlea was right there when the mailman come. My name on the package and she’s openin’ it like it’s hers. Now she gits the mail sent to a post office box and checks through it. My own flesh-and-blood daughter an’ she’s got the sex drive of a tube of toothpaste. She cain’t understand what I’m goin’ through, stuck in this chair and this house.”
I made the jack-off motion. “You must have memories to work from.”
“I used ‘em up,” he hissed. “I been thinking about that sweet Cherry ass. Only thing I got that’s new, an’ I’m gettin’ wore out on it.” He strained sideways, trying to see past me at the screen. “Git that teevee started up again.”
“First I want to show you some other interesting items.”
I retrieved a magazine from the briefcase and opened it just out of grab range. I flipped through pages. “Oh my lord,” Coggins wheezed, eyes wide. “I’m about to loose a load just looking. Slow down.”
I set the magazines aside and opened the briefcase, showed him the thickness of the stack within. He was panting so hard I wondered if I should turn up the oxygen.
“They’re yours, Mr Coggins. Hide them. Look at one magazine a day, one video a week. By the time you get through, the old ones will be new again.”
“Gimme,” he wheezed, his old claw grabbing for the pages like junk to an addict. “Pleeeeease.”
“When you give me what I need.”
“Whaaaat?”
I leaned back and set the magazines on the table, a foot from his reach. I popped the DVD from the player and set it atop the books with the others.
“I need history, Mr Coggins. History.”
43
After a fifteen-minute conversation with Lester Coggins, I went to Cherry’s office and waited in the lot. Two phone calls about dogs came through in ten minutes. After a few questions I determined neither was Mix-up. Cherry arrived twenty minutes later.
“Are you converted yet?” I said, stepping from my truck and handing back the borrowed briefcase, empty now.
She pushed open the door and we went inside. “I’m a believer, Ryder, but on my own terms. Fact and reason shouldn’t negate faith, but enhance it. Why does religion have to be four hundred years behind everything else?”
“I’m not the one to ask about theology. I just finished whipping an elderly man into a sexual frenzy.”
“Was it worth it?” she asked.
“You be the judge. Coggins ran with Powers for about two years, coupling like ferrets on Viagra. On back roads, in local motels, now and then grabbing a hot weekend at one of the casino boats on the Ohio River.”
“We knew that from before.”
“Powers also liked money a lot and spent it fast when she got it. Plus she had a thing for cockfights and dogfights. She loved the noise and action and being one of the few females in the crowd, a hundred men eyeballing her. One time she and Coggins attended a dogfight. Coming back, Powers alluded to being friends with folks in the biz, and suggested Coggins might put some of his money in a special investment.”
“Dogs?”
“Powers got coy, called it an ‘educational opportunity’. She alluded to risks, but the money came in hard and fast. She also added that the risks had recently been reduced. Something about being put under a star.”
“Educational dogfights? Under a star? Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“We’re lucky Lester Coggins remembered that much. He hears through his tongue. Anyway, the pair went back a week later. No fight, but caged dogs were visible. Powers was, according to Coggins, ‘stoned about two planets away’. She laughed and said the place was a school.”
“A school for dogs?”
“Coggins saw small sheds tucked in the trees. Standing in the doorways were a raggedy band of kids, a half-dozen boys, ‘sulky looking’, in Coggins’s description. A couple of them had bandages on their faces. He thought the boys looked about as stoned as Powers.”
“Coggins recognize the kids?”
“He thought he’d seen one around Campton a few times, a kid with the first name of Donald.”
“Donald what?”
I shook my head. “Coggins remembers every sexual encounter he ever had because sex is all that’s important in his life. The kids were just faces. He only remembered the kid’s name because it reminded him of Donald Duck.”
“I’d love to see this so-called school. Where was it?”
“Coggins had no idea. Powers did all the driving. He thought it was east somewhere.”
“Daddy Coggins refused the offer to invest, I take it?”
“Coggins was a glutton for sex, not money. He made a good living as a union miner. Coggins blew Powers off by saying he couldn’t get money without his wife finding out. They started drifting apart about then. Seems Tandee found a new significant other named - I need a drum roll here - Sonny Burton.”
“I should have seen that one coming. When nasty meets nasty, is that nasty squared?”
“There’s more. The night Powers took Coggins to the dogfight? There was a main parking area filled with cars. There was also a second lot tucked away behind the barn, something like VIP parking. There were a few cars and trucks there … and one large white step-van.”
“Maybe Burton was already hanging around, you think? One of the originals? He’s always had white delivery vans.” She stepped to the window and studied the distant peaks while rubbing her temples. “You know what this resembles, don’t you?”
I nodded. “What Crayline went through in Alabama around the same time, eighteen to twenty years ago. Except there was nothing that could be called educational in Crayline’s history.”
“Education, education …” Cherry mumbled, scooting to her desk and riffling through the paperwork overload. She snapped a page from the heap and began reading.
“Tandee Powers was a substitute teacher, Carson. Almost twenty years ago. It didn’t seem to agree with her, she taught at the local junior high a few dozen times. I checked all that, no ties anywhere. But she also filed for a home school certificate eighteen years ago, kept the papers active for five years. Zeke Tanner had teac
her aspirations, too.”
“Tanner?”
“I remember him talking about setting up a school when he first started as a preacher. Talking about adding a TV link to services, building a network, turning the church into a major venture like what’s-his-name down in your state, Ryder. The chunky guy in the big scandal?”
“Richard Scaler.” I recalled Scaler’s empire, his college and TV outlet. Compared it with memories of Tanner’s trailer-church, folding chairs in front of the pulpit that numbered less than thirty.
“Did Tanner do anything about the school?” I asked. “Like getting it off the ground?”
“Big dreams with no follow-through, that was Zeke. As far as starting a school, you file an application. It’s a formality. You don’t need a teaching certificate, experience, anything. There are illiterates teaching home schools.”
“Eighteen years back. Would there be a paper trail?”
She picked up the phone. “No one in the Kentucky bureaucracy ever throws anything away. It’s finding it that’s the trick - could take months. I’ve got a friend in the system and a favor to call in. Keep your fingers crossed.”
“I’m running back to the cabin to check on Mix-up,” I said. “Keep yours crossed, too.”
We waved our crossed fingers at one another.
44
No sign of my dog. I fought the visions of wounded animals crawling from car strikes to die miserably at the side of the road and forced down a power bar for supper. I grew steadily angrier at my brother for luring me here. He’d wanted company and someone to keep the law from checking his background, and I’d nearly been killed and worse, lost my dog.
Jeremy hated any kind of pet - dogs especially - and his mention of poisoning Mix-up wouldn’t leave my mind.
It was almost dusk when I crept through the woods behind his house, thinking I might push him on Mix-up, make sure he was telling the truth. Or maybe I just wanted him to give me an excuse to punch out a few of his lying teeth.
