by Neal Bowers
“Good, you’re still up. Come on down to the station and I’ll show you something guaranteed to keep you awake the rest of the night.”
Davis said, “Ten minutes,” then thought hard after hanging up. She did say she was at the station. Wishful thinking on his part that she might be at home, that her offer was a proposition of a more personal kind. “The station,” he repeated to himself mechanically, wondering if it was still on Commerce Street.
There were so few cars out at two A.M. that Davis felt himself transported back to the little town of his childhood. He might be a child, dreaming himself old enough to drive, motor idling at empty intersections when the lights went red. What was it he wanted to do? Where was he going? In the dream, the driving was aimless. Streets uncoiled past darkened houses; and through his rolled-down windows, he felt the place around him, a pressure equalized. This was his destination.
He drove past the police department and parked uphill in a large lot where the old Hotel Montgomery once stood, torn down so long ago he barely remembered it; he might not have remembered it at all if he and his parents hadn’t stood across from the building each year to watch the Christmas parade. Even then it had been a hulking backdrop, empty and dangerous, crumbling in on itself.
Too many memories. Davis shut them down by pricking his finger to take a blood sugar reading in the glow of the dashlights. This was the here and now—340. He prepared the syringe for the insulin he needed. Santa went past in a candy-cane coach, the last float. Voices of the crowd dispersing became two policemen, off-duty and headed home. Davis concealed his needle and got out of the car.
Ann Louise was waiting just inside the front door and held it open as Davis came up the steps. She led him through more doorways, past a little room lit with computer screens and the blinking buttons of phones. “911,” she said. When they reached her cubicle at the far end of a room laid out like a maze of hedges, she motioned to a straight-back chair and sat down in the swiveler behind her desk. Davis stood a moment, looking at the carpeted walls of her small space, then eased himself onto the hard vinyl seat.
“What kind of shift do you work?” he asked.
“Depends on what I’m investigating. Hours don’t mean much when you’ve got a case going.”
“Do you have a case?”
“You tell me,” she countered, handing him a yearbook. It was from Vanderbilt University, 1954. “Look up Winningham in the graduating class.”
“Where’d you get the piece of history?” he asked, holding the corner near his nose, inhaling the musky past.
Ann Louise winked. “Nashville’s only a forty-five-minute drive from here. Less if you turn on the lights and siren.”
Davis flipped the pages, pausing now and then at a face smiling out at him in black and white. “Charles Winningham?” he asked finally, index finger rubbing the crew cut as if he could feel the bristle.
“Now look at this.” Ann Louise handed over a thick folder, and Davis fumbled it atop the yearbook, which he kept open on his lap. Inside were forms and newspaper clippings. The headline on top of the pile read PROMINENT CLARKSVILLE ATTORNEY STILL MISSING. Davis fingered through the articles beneath words like “mystery” and “vanished” and “foul play.”
“We never found him.”
Davis was having trouble connecting the yearbook and the case file. Even when Ann Louise said, “The ring,” he still couldn’t make sense of it.
“Charles Winningham disappeared eight years ago,” she told him. “Some said he ran off with a secret lover; some said he was murdered. Made quite a splash around here, as you can see. The question now is, who’s buried in your daddy’s grave?”
Davis was reading an interview typescript. “Pardon?” he said, looking up distractedly.
“If the ring we found came from the arm you say you pulled through the wall of your daddy’s grave, either he was wearing Winningham’s ring or that was Charles Winningham’s hand and arm.”
Davis closed the folder and sat speechless. Finally, he asked, “Why does the ring have to belong to Winningham? Did you find an inscription inside the band?”
“No name or initials. But we found it in a grave that was open at exactly the time old Chuck, a 1954 Vandy grad, dropped out of sight forever.”
“What if it’s just some freak coincidence? We found a ring somebody else lost years ago.”
“Could be, but I think we’ve got cause to exhume your father.”
Davis jumped to his feet. “I came home to bury my mother, not dig up my father. Let’s leave the dead alone.”
“Aren’t you the guy who wanted to dig up his father and sue the undertaker for selling him a shoddy coffin? I can get a court order without your consent, but it would be a lot easier if you’d help out. Either way, we’re going to have a look in your daddy’s grave.” Her voice had become emotionless, official.
Davis walked out of the cubicle and wound among the partitions. Then he wheeled and shouted, “Look, if my father isn’t in his grave, where the hell is he? You’re trying to trade one lost man for another.”
“I’m trying to do my job,” she said flatly, looking at him over the top of her carpeted wall.
“How soon would the exhumation take place?”
“By tomorrow afternoon.” Then, looking at her watch and realizing midnight had passed, she revised herself. “This afternoon. If you’ll sign the consent form, we can have everything done before dark.”
Davis hesitated, then signed the paper she placed in front of him, her fingertip resting just above the line.
“I’ll fill in everything else and see the judge as soon as his office opens this morning. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll call you when I know anything.”
“Does Winningham have family living here?”
“I think his wife’s still in Clarksville. Why?”
“Let’s show her the ring before you go to court.”
Ann Louise seemed about to balk, but then said, “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”
*
The doorbell rang at seven-fifteen. Davis had tried to stay up all night but fell asleep in his mother’s recliner, her empty purse in his lap. Clearing his throat was an amphibian adjustment, out of the pond of sleep onto the slippery bank of another day. His father had called this “the systems check”—eyes blurry, neck a little stiff, tongue a foreign object. When he finally tottered to the door and opened it, Ann Louise laughed and said, “Good morning, sunshine.”
“God, how I hate cheerful morning people,” he said, unsteady on his feet, rubbing his eyes.
“Cheerful people will probably return the favor. You don’t look so good. More diabetes problems?”
“More like sleep deprivation. Why’d we have to start so early?”
“I thought you wanted to meet Marie Winningham, and I was hoping to catch her before her first cup of coffee. People are more honest when they’re not completely awake.”
Concentrating on taking a blood sugar sample, Davis was having trouble pricking his finger. When he clicked the lancet device a third time, the point went deep enough to make him wince. Seeing Ann Louise grimace, he said, “We’ll do yours next.” She didn’t respond but leaned over to read the meter when the figure appeared—117. “First normal reading I’ve had since I got here,” Davis said, immediately feeling better.
“You’ve got time for a quick shower,” Ann Louise offered, seating herself in the recliner.
When Davis emerged from the bathroom, Ann Louise was sitting in the same place but had clearly done some wandering. “What’s all that stuff on the dining room table?”
“Been investigating, have you?”
“Hey, I’m a cop. What can you expect?”
“Those are the contents of my mother’s purse.”
“Geez, I’d hate to think somebody would dump my purse and take inventory. Might as well do a brain probe.”
“Yeah? I’ll bet you don’t have a strip of condoms in your bag.”
“Th
at information is given out on a need-to-know basis.”
Was she flirting? Maybe he should press the moment to see what would happen. A great follow-up line, that’s what he needed—something like “My credentials give me full access.” No, no, too aggressive. A teaser would be better. Shit! How could he be so awkward with a woman? Might as well be seventeen. There she was, waiting for his comeback. The moment was pure potential. Anything could happen. Or nothing. Either way, the kinetic energy would dissipate, was dissipating. Then she was standing, moving toward the door.
“Are you coming?”
God, what a question! Maybe he should touch her shoulder, turn her around, make some kind of cinematic move. She had to know what he was thinking. He couldn’t take his eyes off the back of her neck, couldn’t think of anything to say except her name. When she turned and looked at him, he still didn’t have a follow-up line.
“What?” She sounded puzzled and impatient. And when he said nothing, she asked again, this time lifting her hands and letting them fall in a gesture of exasperation. She didn’t get it. Or he didn’t. Either way, nothing was going to happen.
*
The Winningham house was in an older section of town, one of the original gentry zones. Davis could remember driving by it as a teenager cruising the town with time to fill. It had impressed him then, but now looked like fake Frank Lloyd Wright, a single-level brick built to follow the contour of a small ridge. The main door was in the exact center of the broken crescent design. “Predictable,” thought Davis. But the hand-lettered sign tacked to the door was not: CHEMICAL-FREE ZONE. WARNING! IF YOU HAVE HAD A CHEMICAL EXPOSURE IN THE PAST 48 HOURS, DO NOT ENTER.
“I guess no one from the plutonium lab is welcome,” Davis observed, wondering silently if the drain cleaner he had poured into the toilet at his mother’s house less than two days ago constituted an exposure.
When Ann Louise rang the bell, a woman’s face appeared in one of the long glass panels beside the door. Another minute and the door opened hesitantly, the same face now partly hidden by a dust mask covering the mouth and nose, a white elastic band biting into each ear. The woman kept her eyes fixed on them as she left the door open and backed away as if they were stalking her. She was a tall woman, big-boned and well filled out, hair chopped off short. She wore faded khaki, like a uniform, rumpled and stripped of insignia.
“Mrs. Winningham?” Ann Louise asked tentatively. “Mrs. Winningham, I’m from the Clarksville Police Department.” She extended her identification, which the woman waved off.
They were now in a bare room with a freestanding stone fireplace in the center. It was meant to be the showpiece of the house but seemed misplaced in a room stripped down to unvarnished floors and walls scrubbed back to the original plaster. Looking from side to side, Davis saw that there was no place to sit. No furniture of any kind. No curtains. No pillows. No rugs. He had seen more hospitable campsites.
Mrs. Winningham had rounded the fireplace partly and stopped. Ann Louise and Davis stopped, too, twenty feet away and blocked from her by stone and mortar.
“Don’t come any closer.” The voice was stronger than Davis expected, even muffled by the mask. “Fumes of any kind might kill me—dye in clothing, shampoo scent in someone’s hair.” She waited, apparently to let this information seep in, and Davis kept thinking she looked too strapping to be susceptible to anything short of a dose of rat poison.
“Mrs. Winningham, I have to ask you something,” Ann Louise began, but before she could continue, the woman began to gasp and back away.
“You’re wearing perfume, aren’t you. You’ll have to leave immediately.” She was making a sweeping motion with the back of her right hand while firmly holding her mask with the left.
“It’s about your husband, Mrs. Winningham.” Ann Louise ignored the woman’s forced dry cough, which rang like hatchet blows in the empty room. Ann Louise’s voice echoed faintly in the hollow space, “Your husband.”
Mrs. Winningham stopped sweeping them out but backed farther away and waited.
“Can you identify this ring for us?” Ann Louise started toward her but then placed the ring on the edge of the fireplace between them.
Mrs. Winningham looked at it without moving. “I’ll have to get the people in to purify this room,” she said in a near monotone. Then she screamed, “Get out! Get out! Charlie took his rings when he left.”
Davis stepped forward and pocketed the ring, then turned with Ann Louise and left the house. He expected to hear the door slamming behind them, but it remained open, and Marie Winningham’s hatcheting resonated within.
Once they were inside the car, Ann Louise placed both hands on the steering wheel and said, “Well, that was different.”
Davis felt like laughing, but nothing more than a small “huh” came out. Marie Winningham made Ben Blau look like a bad amateur. He was certain that, somewhere in the house, she closeted herself with whiskey and cigarettes, spraying the air with pine freshener. “A wasted trip,” he said as Ann Louise started the engine.
Looking over her left shoulder and backing out, Ann Louise said, “Doesn’t matter. I put someone on the court order for the exhumation before I left the station.”
Davis felt a flash of anger. His request to postpone the hearing until they had seen Marie Winningham had not been honored. “What if she had said it definitely wasn’t her husband’s ring?” he asked, trying not to sound as pissed off as he felt.
“Well, she didn’t. Besides, it’s somebody’s, and my money’s still on Charles Winningham. Don’t you need some breakfast?”
Davis let his silence stand for assent and tried to guess where they were headed. When Ann Louise turned in to the crowded parking lot at Moss’s Café, he said, “You’ve gotta be kidding. I thought this place went under years ago.”
“Some parts of the old town just won’t die. Peel away all the franchises and the people who came here looking for a New South and it’s the same old place you and I grew up in.”
Even when Davis was a kid, Moss’s was an anachronism, a cramped roadside diner attached to a gas station on what was then the edge of town. The B. F. Goodrich plant had been right across the highway, and the café’s main business came from the rubber workers. McDonald’s had already stunned the town with its OVER ONE MILLION SERVED sign, and the death of originals like this greasy eatery was assured. Still, here was Moss’s, looking exactly the way Davis remembered it—a short counter facing the kitchen, half a dozen Formica-topped tables with chairs jumbled around them, the sound of frying, food steam in the air.
Seeing them come in, a man at the counter moved down one stool to make room for Ann Louise and Davis to sit side by side. “What’ll it be, darlin’?” a huge woman in splattered white was asking Ann Louise before she was seated.
“Regular breakfast. Scramble the eggs.”
Realizing the woman was looking at him, Davis said, “The same. And coffee.”
“Coffee comes with it,” Ann Louise whispered, and Davis suddenly felt conspicuous. “So do grits.”
“I don’t like grits,” Davis protested, swiveling on his seat to have a look around.
The clientele was a strange cross-section: mostly men, some in suits, others in coveralls or jeans. Everyone talked at once, and whenever a table opened up, more people plopped into the chairs and began loud conversations.
“This time tomorrow, they’ll be talking about Charles Winningham,” Ann Louise remarked, reading his mind.
“You’re bound to go through with this business, then.”
“I told you. I’m a cop. It’s what I do.”
“And what if you dig up nobody but my poor father, who’s been at peace for the past eight years?”
“I’ll apologize.”
Their orders appeared simultaneously, two chipped oval platters with eggs, sausage patties, and grits oozing butter. Two big biscuits teetered on the edge. Davis had no insulin with him but needed to eat. He promised himself he would balance everything
out later with an injection.
“Hey, hey,” someone called behind them. “If it isn’t Lieutenant Wilson. Cuff me, sweetie. If I didn’t do it, I’d sure like to.”
Davis was turning around when Ann Louise put her hand on his arm and said, “Let it pass. Like I said, it’s the same old town.”
“Get on outta here, Marvin,” called an enormous man from behind the counter. “Unless you want me to kick your ass this early in the day.”
As he pushed through the door, Marvin made a sound—“Umm-um!”—that brought the big man forward in a mock charge.
“Sorry, Ann Louise. Breakfast’s on me today.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jerry. Let me introduce you to Davis Banks.”
Jerry stuck out a loin-sized hand and said, “Banks, Banks, where do I know that name from?”
“It’s just one of those names, like Rivers or Fields,” Davis said, pulling his hand back over the counter.
“Who’s your daddy?”
“Ralph Banks.”
Jerry was still coming up blank, but he persisted. “What’s he do?”
“He was in the insurance business. Worked for Life of Georgia for thirty years,” Davis lied.
“That must be it, then. Musta met him when he was in here selling insurance.”
Davis agreed, “Probably.”
While Jerry was trying to connect with the Banks family, Ann Louise’s cell phone had chirped inside her purse, and she had engaged in a short, mumbled conversation, of which Davis could make out nothing. Now she turned to him and said, “Everything’s set for two o’clock this afternoon. You want to be there, don’t you?” The question indicated that she expected him to say yes. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff to take care of between now and then, so let me drop you off at your mother’s. You’ve probably got things you need to do. Right?” she asked.
Davis couldn’t think of a single thing. Then he glanced down at the smeared plate in front of him and remembered his insulin. “Right,” he responded.
Jerry turned from a table he was clearing and pushed the door open for them. Davis had to shuffle sideways past Jerry’s large stomach, and he paused a moment to say, “Next time we’ll talk life insurance.” Jerry’s smile weakened a little at the corners.
