South Of Hell lk-9

by P J Parrish

  Louis stopped himself, seeing two uniformed patrolmen approaching. He pulled in a breath, and he and Shockey both waited until the cops disappeared into the station.

  “Jean never mentioned a kid,” Shockey said. “I’m telling you the truth. We talked about everything, but I swear, no kid.”

  “Then how do you explain the wagon?” Louis asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Shockey said. “Probably belongs to some neighbor kid.”

  “There’s not a house for miles around that place, you know that.”

  “Then maybe someone else lived there for a short time after Brandt left.”

  “Brandt never sold it.”

  Shockey was quiet.

  “There was pink wallpaper in one of the bedrooms,” Louis said.

  “My ex-wife put pink wallpaper in our bedroom,” Shockey said. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I know there was a kid there,” Louis said.

  “Then what happened to her?” Shockey asked.

  “What do you think?” Louis asked.

  Shockey froze for a second, then moved away, raking his hair. He seemed genuinely stunned. Louis wanted to believe he was, but the man had been playing on the edge of the truth since this began.

  Shockey turned back to him. His face was slack, but Louis could almost see the gears in his brain working, like he was trying hard to remember something.

  “Okay, okay,” Shockey said. “Maybe Jean had a kid, I don’t know. But I swear to God, she never said anything.”

  “We need to find out for sure,” Louis said.

  Shockey didn’t seem to hear him. He was still stunned by what Louis had told him.

  “Shockey,” Louis said, “where do you want to start?”

  Shockey scratched his forehead. “Well, without an age or birth date, there’s no point in checking state records,” he said. “You should start with the schools out there.”

  Louis let out a stale breath, his head throbbing. “They won’t tell me anything,” he said. “Their records are confidential.”

  Louis heard the door behind him open and saw Shockey look beyond him. Shockey thrust out his hand as Joe came up to them.

  “Detective Jake Shockey,” he said, introducing himself. “You must be the undersheriff.”

  “Joe Frye, Leelanau County,” Joe said with a smile.

  Shockey tipped his head toward Louis. “You with the peeper on a personal visit or working the case with him?”

  “Mostly the first, a little of the second.”

  Shockey gave Joe a quick, appraising look, then turned back to Louis. “Folks in those towns out there will talk to a sheriff.”

  He nodded to Joe. “Just let her flash her badge.”

  The school in Hell was a three-story, red brick building. To the right was a playground, to the left a football field. There were a bunch of screaming kids on the swings and a squad of teenage boys running sprints on the field. The two contrasting stretches of grass were testament to the school’s service to students from kindergarten to high school.

  “Got your badge out?” Louis asked.

  Joe glanced at him and led the way into the school’s dim lobby. At the door stenciled with the word office, Louis held the door open so Joe could go in first.

  A woman with winged glasses and a thick cardigan sweater rose from a desk to greet them. While Joe introduced herself, Louis looked around. Beyond the windows, he could see the football field’s scoreboard, one of those old hang-the-numbers kinds, with a cut-out of a roaring lion mounted on top.

  The secretary’s voice drew him back to her.

  “Amy Brandt?” the woman said. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard the name. Do you know what grade she would have been in?”

  “Old enough to have a wagon and young enough to still want to play with it,” Joe said.

  They waited while the woman rifled through a file cabinet. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have no Amy Brandt.”

  Louis had the thought that maybe Amy might be a middle name or a nickname. “Do you have any Brandts?” he asked.

  The woman reached back into the drawer and pulled out two folders. “I have a Geneva and an Owen.”

  “May we see Owen’s?” Louis asked.

  The secretary came back to the counter and started to hand the file to Joe. Louis intercepted it and flipped it open. He had no idea what could be in there that could be of any use, but he wanted to look.

  The first paper was a history of Owen Brandt’s time in school. He started kindergarten in 1953, missed a year in 1962, and finally dropped out in the tenth grade.

  Louis sifted through the rest. Report cards, heavy with D’s and F’s, teachers’ notes, class schedules, and a list of family contacts.

  “Geneva was his older sister,” he said to Joe.

  Joe was flipping through Geneva’s file. “I know. Nothing important in her file. Mediocre grades, lots of absences. Looks like she left school at sixteen.”

  Louis found a form titled “Disciplinary History.” It was filled with the handwriting of teachers, starting in grade school: fighting, insubordination, fighting, truancy.

  “Look at these,” Louis said, sliding the paper to Joe.

  Age ten. Owen hit Mary Jane Wilson in her face with his fist. Suspended three days. Age fourteen. Owen tore Betsy Miller’s blouse. Sheriff Potts called. Suspended three weeks.

  “I have a feeling that was more than a torn blouse,” Joe said.

  Louis nodded. He closed the file and handed it back to the secretary. Joe thanked her, and they left the school. As they walked across the parking lot, Louis fell a few paces behind. Joe turned to look back at him when she reached the Bronco.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Sorry about that remark about you having your badge ready,” he said.

  “No problem.”

  “It was just the hangover talking.”

  “Forget it,” Joe said. “Where do you want to go now?”

  “I want to talk to some people in town,” he said. “Just because the kid never made it to school doesn’t mean she didn’t exist.”

  He counted seven buildings in Hell. On one side of County Road D32 stood a general store, a Marathon gas station, the Brimstone Cafe, and a souvenir shop called the Devil’s Lair. On the other side of the blacktop road was the Tree Top Tavern, a real estate office that doubled as a doughnut shop, and a second souvenir store called Lucifer’s. Halloween costumes, mostly devils, hung in the window. Near the door sat a barrel of plastic pitchforks.

  “These people are scary,” Joe said as she climbed out of the Bronco.

  Louis closed his door and looked around, a small memory kicking in: passing through this place on one of his foster father Phillip’s long Sunday drives. He’d been about eleven and wanted to stop and get a devil mask. His foster mother, Frances, was a little sharp as she told him she wouldn’t hear of it. It had taken him years to figure out that it had nothing to do with him but everything to do with the crucifix that hung over her bed.

  Louis pulled the picture of Owen Brandt from his pocket, and they went inside the Devil’s Lair.

  The old place was packed to its wood rafters. Shelves of T-shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with i’ve been to hell and back. Racks of Halloween costumes. Counters heaped with red coffee mugs, plastic skulls, bobble-head devils, and hats printed with flames.

  The middle-aged guy behind the register was bagging up some shirts for a woman. Louis waited until she was gone, then introduced himself.

  The man seemed impressed by the fact that there was a real private investigator in his store. “My name’s Harry,” he said. “What can I help you with?”

  Louis showed him Brandt’s photo. “Do you know this man?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “That’s Owen Brandt.”

  “You know much about him?” Louis asked.

  “Haven’t seen him for years,” Harry said. “He used to come into town once in a while. Buy some gas or groceries.
Big, friendly guy.”

  Louis held out the picture of Jean Brandt. He had cut off the missing persons part of the bulletin, leaving only her face.

  “You ever see him with this woman?” Louis asked.

  Harry peered at the photo and started to shake his head, but a memory hit him. “Oh, yeah, I did,” he said. “One time, maybe 1977 or so. We were all sitting over at the Brimstone having coffee, and Owen pulled up. He came inside, but she stayed in the truck. I could see her pretty good because we were in the window booth.”

  “Was she alone in the truck?” Louis asked.

  “Far as I could tell,” Harry said. “I remember thinking how strange it was for Owen to leave her out there in the cold while he came in and ate himself a nice hot breakfast.”

  Louis picked up the two pictures.

  “In fact,” Harry went on, “I remember that same winter, Fred from over at the gas station drove down to deliver Owen some firewood. Normally, Owen chopped his own or came and picked it up, but his truck was broke or something.”

  “What happened?” Louis asked.

  “Fred said he started to help Owen unload the wood,” Harry said. “But Owen told him never mind, and he got the woman from inside the house to come help him. It was freezing cold, and Fred said Owen made that woman make all these trips back and forth carrying logs that weighed more than she did.”

  “Did you ever see a child with Owen Brandt?” Louis asked.

  Harry’s brow rose in surprise. “A child? No.”

  “This Fred fellow from the gas station, did he mention seeing a child?”

  Harry shook his head. “He would’ve, too, because later that night at the bar, we all talked about how crappy it was to make that woman work like that.”

  “Thank you,” Louis said.

  He went back through the store, but Joe was gone. He stepped outside to see her coming out of the cafe, carrying two Styrofoam cups. She met him at the rear end of the Bronco and gave him one.

  “You find out anything over there?” he asked.

  “Just that people here liked Owen Brandt, as far as they knew him,” she said. “No one ever saw a child with him.”

  “I want to try the places across the street,” Louis said.

  Joe let out a small, frustrated sigh. He knew she thought this was a waste of time, but he didn’t say anything as he started across the road.

  No one in the bar or the other gift shop knew Owen well enough to offer an opinion, nor had anyone ever seen him with a child. He had better luck at the real estate office. The woman behind the desk stood up quickly when Louis showed him the picture.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know him. He called me once about selling that farm of his.”

  “When?” Louis asked.

  She opened a file cabinet behind her and came out with a thin folder. The single piece of paper in it looked like an appraisal.

  “It was November 3, 1980,” she said. “He heard about the big food-processing companies that were trying to buy out the small farmers and he wanted me to come down and take a look and figure out how much he could get if he decided to sell.”

  “Did you go to the farm?” Louis asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember we stood outside, and, well, just between me and you, the place was kind of decrepit. It was like just out in the middle of nowhere at the end of this dead-end road. I knew the big companies didn’t care about the buildings, and I could have used the commission. But I still remember wanting to get away from that place as fast as I could.”

  “While you were there did you see a child? Or any evidence that a child lived there?” Louis asked.

  “No,” she said. “But he wouldn’t let me inside.”

  “Did you see a woman out there?” Louis asked.

  “No.”

  “So Brandt seemed interested in selling?”

  “Very much so,” she said. “But about a month later, right after Christmas, I called him back and he said he had changed his mind. Said something about not wanting to sell something that had been in his family for generations.”

  Louis thanked her and left.

  Joe was sitting in the driver’s seat when he got back to the Bronco, leafing through some of the papers she had brought with her from Echo Bay.

  “Find anything?” she asked.

  “Just that Owen Brandt was looking to sell that farm in November, 1980, but a month later, after Jean disappeared, he suddenly changed his mind.”

  Joe set the folder aside and started the engine. She did a U-turn in the parking lot, pulled up to the road, and stopped.

  “We go left to get back to Ann Arbor, right?” she asked.

  “We’re not going to Ann Arbor,” he said. “We’re going back to the farm.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to look through those storage boxes,” he said. “Kids need stuff. It couldn’t all just disappear.”

  Joe shoved the Bronco into park and turned to face him. “Louis,” she said, “it’s bad enough you entered the house illegally once. Ripping open sealed boxes without a warrant is another thing altogether. You could jeopardize Shockey’s case in court.”

  “I won’t be looking for evidence of a murder, just some indication that a kid lived there. No one ever needs to know.”

  “And if you just happen to find evidence of a murder?” she asked. “What happens then?”

  “Then I put it back, reseal it, and we find another way to expose it later.”

  “You’re asking me to stand by and watch you break the law,” she said.

  He held her eyes for a moment. “You can always go home.”

  She turned away from him, hands resting on the wheel. Then, with a hard jerk of the gearshift, she put the Bronco into drive and headed south out of Hell.

  Chapter Eleven

  J ust like Crazy Verna…

  That was the first thing that came into Owen Brandt’s head as he stood in the doorway of the bedroom in a house on Locust Street in Hudson, Michigan.

  The dead woman lay in her bed. Her skin was gray, her eyes sunken, her ragged black hair thin, giving her face the look of one of the those cheap rubber Halloween witch masks they sold at that souvenir place back in Hell.

  He was glad her eyes were closed, at least. Death never bothered him, but he really didn’t want to look into his sister’s eyes when she was starting to rot.

  Geneva… poor old Gen.

  He hadn’t seen her in nine years. What a reunion.

  They had never been close. Even though it was just her and him in the house most of the time. Even though she had tried to keep Pa from beating on him, even snuck him some food those times Pa had locked him in the barn. And after Ma died…

  Died, shit. Ma had always been strange, but after that winter, when she ran all the way to Lethe Creek and tried to drown herself, things got really weird. “Crazy Verna,” the folks in Hell called her after that, and Pa had to keep her locked up in the attic until that day she finally did off herself.

  Gen tried to take Ma’s place for a while. But the first chance she got, what did she do? She ran off at sixteen with that truck driver guy she met at the Texaco and never looked back. Left him there alone on that farm with that old bastard.

  “Fuck you, too, Gen,” Brandt muttered.

  He wiped his nose. The stench was getting to him, and he didn’t want to stay long in case smells like this got into his clothes. He didn’t have too many shirts and only one pair of jeans, and he didn’t want them all stunk up by some rotted corpse.

  He nodded a goodbye to his sister and went back through the house, looking for her purse. He found an old leather thing sitting on a table in the living room. Nothing in it but an empty wallet and some pennies. He tossed it aside and looked around.

  The sofa was stained with what smelled like urine and had towels draped over the back. He moved to the kitchen, remembering that Geneva used to keep money in coffee cans. The room was cleaner than he expected, all the dishes washed and stacked
neatly in the sink. On the shelf above the stove was a Maxwell House coffee can. He opened it. There was fifteen cents in the bottom.

  He set it back and scanned the room.

  Where was the girl?

  Not that it mattered. She was old enough now to be out on her own. Hell, after Pa died, he went out on his own, making his own money, spending most of his time on the street, and hustling cash. A girl could do even better if she knew how.

  Brandt rifled through the kitchen drawers, gave the other rooms a quick search, and left the house. The green Gremlin was sitting in the driveway, puffing thick clouds of exhaust into the icy morning air. Brandt slid into the passenger seat.

  “Did she give you any money?”

  He glanced at the woman behind the wheel. Margi wasn’t so bad in the dark, but she looked like hell in the daylight.

  “She’s dead,” Brandt said. “Let’s go.”

  “But where we gonna get money?” Margi asked. “I only have twenty bucks. Where we gonna go on twenty bucks?”

  “We can go to Hell,” Brandt said.

  “Come on, Owen,” she said. “Where are we going for real? I’m tired. Where are we going to stay tonight?”

  “I try to make a joke, and you’re too fucking dumb to even get it,” Brandt said. “Drive. Go back to the freeway, and head north.”

  “I’m tired of driving. I’ve been doing all the driving ever since we left Ohio. How come you can’t drive?”

  “’Cause I ain’t got no fucking license, and I’m on parole,” Brandt said. “Now drive.”

  Margi set her lips and slapped the gearshift into park. “You promised me a nice hotel.”

  Brandt backhanded her, catching her hard in the mouth. She covered her face, a small trickle of blood on her fingers.

  “You bastard,” she whispered.

  “Drive, or I’ll smack you again.”

  Brandt looked out his window, fighting the urge just to toss the bitch from the car and leave her on the curb. But he had to remember — he was free but not completely free. Parolees weren’t ever completely free. He couldn’t break any laws, like driving this shit car. He couldn’t drink, and he couldn’t go see any of his prison buds. And he couldn’t throw a woman from a car. Not again.