Blackbird

by Tom Wright

  By this time the boats carrying the reporters, some hoisting cameras onto their shoulders, had closed to hailing range.

  As LA watched me twist the frog free of the bass’s lip a reporter in the first boat, a stocky young guy with a bushy black moustache, apparently holding no grudge over being ditched, yelled, ‘Hey, can I get a shot of that?’ I held the dripping green-gold fish up for the cameras, then bent down and slipped the fish back into the water and watched it swim away.

  The media boats eased in as close as they could without getting in the way of our fishing and dropped anchor.

  ‘No way I’ll ever beat that one,’ I said. ‘I’m calling it quits.’

  LA didn’t care. Already back in her casting chair, she sailed the now slightly bent frog out at about two o’clock from her first cast, this time dropping it into a narrow lane of water between the pads, then settled back to wait, her eyes locked on the tiny bump of the frog’s back on the smooth water.

  I stowed my rod and sat back in my casting chair. Neither of us said anything. With the lulling sound of waves lightly slapping the hull and the warmth of the sun, I began to drift into daydreams, remembering the strange images I’d been drawing compulsively all week. The muscular bare arm holding a hammer that was actually a sword made sense to me now; the squatty-looking T didn’t. But I’d noticed that in my mental representations it was changing too, becoming less like a letter of the alphabet and more like a gallows or a stanchion supporting a crosspiece with something hanging like fruit baskets from either end.

  Then suddenly these images were replaced by an impression of LA writing her name on something somewhere, her signature – all in lower case – stringing her initials and last name together into one word, larowe, the way she’d signed it as long as I could remember. And near her hand on the desk or counter or whatever it was lay her key ring with its round medallion bearing an embossed emblem, an initial, some kind of logo maybe. No mental picture of what it was, just a strong sense that there was something significant there.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘What’s the shape on that little medallion you have on your key ring?’

  My tone roused the reporters, and LA looked at me questioningly as they began grabbing for their cameras and microphones.

  ‘It’s my birth sign,’ she said. ‘They had a whole book full of symbols you could choose from – the clerk asked what my birthday was, looked it up, and sold me this one.’

  ‘You’re a Libra, right? What’s the logo look like?’

  ‘Sometimes they draw it like a little igloo, but mine’s more like this.’ She drew it in the air with her finger, and I gaped at her.

  ‘Let me see that again,’ I said.

  This time her fingertip almost seemed to leave a faint smoke trail as she traced the figure in space.

  It was the drooping T I’d been drawing for days.

  FORTY

  I got the rest of my brainwave as we were winching Bufordine up onto the trailer. No fireworks, no blinding flash of epiphany, not even a bottle-rocket, just the answer. My mental representation of the scribbled glowen that nobody had been able to interpret merged smoothly in my mind with LA’s signature, and like a mirage, separated from it vertically Then both images slowly spaced themselves out horizontally: l a rowe above, g l owen below.

  GL Owen.

  Glen Lawrence & Owen, Inc, the biggest home and general construction contractor in Traverton, whose offices I drove past every day on my way to and from work. The kind of business where framing hammers and the guys who use them would be everyday sights.

  I called Mouncey from the restaurant as we were waiting for our burgers and suggested setting up interviews with Owen site supervisors about their crews. Guys like we were looking for talked a lot, and not always soberly, leaving behind a trail of people who knew all about them and their politics, their sex partners, and everything else from their favourite beer to their boot sizes. Even their lost framing hammers.

  ‘I’d ask about rough carpenters, people with .44 Magnums, guys who move from job to job together and talk about blacks and Jews a lot. Or guys who are Aryan Nation or Klan-connected. And pay special attention to guys who work on concrete slab crews.’

  ‘Why we doin’ that, Lou?’

  ‘The nose knows,’ I said.

  ‘We run it down,’ she said. ‘Good to know you still out there thinkin’.’

  ‘I hear OZ’s holding the line for now.’

  ‘He okay. You know how he talk, like we in a cowboy movie. Say keep our nose in the wind, whatever that mean.’

  ‘Thanks, M.’

  ‘But what about the big man?’ said LA when I ended the call. ‘If you’re right about the GL Owen thing, that probably means construction bums, or at least not high-level planners. They didn’t think this up on their own. Gotta be an evil genius mixed up in there somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t know – maybe Keets could be the guy after all,’ I said. ‘If Mouncey and Ridout collar the grunts who actually did the killings, they’ll probably sweat a name out of them.’

  She shook her head. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘It’s not that big a jump from knowing who the killers were to actually being the mastermind, which says Keets. But then I would’ve thought he’d dance us around about it a little more if he was involved, just to entertain himself. And Frix notches up the confusion. You didn’t find any connection between him and Keets, did you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Okay. Frix was in Gold’s sex club. Maybe he pissed off the same people she did. What if it was about kids or short-termers in the group? Some parent or husband finds out about it, decides to make an example of them instead of going through a trial that would at least embarrass his family and might even end with an acquittal.’

  ‘And crucifies her? Pretty resourceful daddy,’ I said.

  ‘If somebody used Jordan or Casey that way, couldn’t you get something like this done, Bis? If your mind worked that way?’

  The question gave me a short, unwanted inner look at what I might do if the same thing had happened to Casey or Jordan, what I’d tried to do to Jeremy Tidwell, and what I’d intended to do when I thought LA had been killed. Not a pretty picture, but whether I wanted to face it or not, it was exactly how my mind worked. The one glimmer of redemption I could see was that LA, who probably knew my mind better than anybody, including me, didn’t seem to find me scary.

  A man who’s incapable of violence isn’t worth the wind he sucks . . .

  The waitress refilled our glasses, asked if we needed anything else and glided away.

  ‘And who knows more bad guys than a cop?’ LA said. ‘Who’s got more leverage with them?’

  Someone close to me, Keets had said. A guy like me, Max had said. I shook my head, the faces of all the cops I knew flashing through my mind in mugshot format. ‘It just doesn’t compute for me,’ I said.

  LA picked out a slice of radish between thumb and forefinger, ate it in two thoughtful bites. ‘What about Feigel?’

  ‘Besides his involvement with the group, he was the guy supplying coke to Gold.’

  ‘Not a suspect?’

  ‘For Gold, no.’

  ‘Jana said Casey was worried her friend Lena might get pulled into the Feigel thing.’

  ‘No need. There’s a task-force roundup scheduled next month, and it turns out they’ve already got enough to hook him up then.’

  The waitress brought out the burgers, mine with bacon and cheese, LA’s a veggie with organic onion dressing, topped up our iced teas again, smiled and vanished into the kitchen.

  ‘So what happens next with Jana?’ LA asked.

  ‘I’m still going in circles about her,’ I said.

  LA said, ‘No, you’re not,’ and took a sparing bite of soyburger.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you’re going in circles about yourself. Why do you think you haven’t taken the deal on the farm?’

  ‘I’m not a rancher,’ I said. ‘This is all I’ve ever
really done.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ she said. ‘You do what you do because that’s how the cards fell. But don’t forget you managed the Flying S at a profit for a whole year while Mom and Dusty were chasing around Europe to all those fertility clinics, right after you got back from TCU. And Dusty knows you can do it again or he wouldn’t have made the offer.’

  ‘So what are we saying here?’

  ‘I’m saying you’re never going to find anybody who loves you more than Jana does, but she’s not great at showing it, and she’s damn near as prideful and stubborn as you are. And she can’t turn back the clock for you, Bis. She can’t repair history and she can’t be the wife who only watches and waits.’ LA ate a bite of snow pea and said, ‘Not living up to the Flying S has never been your problem, Bis.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘It’s the stories you live by. The endings you believe in.’

  No answer that seemed worth the breath occurred to me.

  ‘Do you really want to know the beginning of this story? I mean enough to pay the price?’

  ‘What price?’

  ‘Beginnings cost almost as much as endings.’

  ‘Are you hypnotising me again?’

  ‘Think you need that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then it doesn’t sound like anything to waste any worry on, does it?’ LA said. ‘Try to clear your mind, relax, focus away from here and now.’ She pinged the rim of her glass with her fingernail. ‘It’s the week after Homecoming. Let yourself remember. Where are you? What are you doing?’

  ‘Aleha ha-shalom,’ Kat said softly, touching the glass covering Dr Kepler’s image. ‘Baruch dayan emet.’

  Before I could ask what this meant she pulled my mouth down to hers and kissed me again, her breath coming faster.

  ‘Five minutes,’ she said, and disappeared into the bathroom.

  I heard the shower come on, and a second later the bathroom door opened and she stuck her head out. ‘When I come out of here I’m going to be naked as a baby,’ she said. ‘I hope you won’t make me feel all alone.’

  Undressing and sliding between the sheets, I lay waiting, my heart slamming in my chest. When Kat said, ‘Ready or not,’ and stepped out of the bathroom in a cloud of steamy air that smelled of Lifebuoy soap, nipples darkly erect, looking slim and white and perfect as a dream, my throat constricted almost to the point of asphyxia. I held the covers back for her, and after striking a little pose for a second she smilingly joined me, saying, ‘I used your toothbrush – I’ll get you a new one.’

  Then her mouth, sweet with Pepsodent, was on mine and she was tight against me, her hands almost hot where they touched my skin. I slid my own hand down the long smooth curve of her side and pulled her leg over mine as we kissed. She reached between my legs, saying, ‘You’re so ready. Come on.’

  But I couldn’t let it be over that soon.

  I moved down to kiss her breasts and her navel and her stomach, then gently pulled her sideways to the edge of the bed, spreading her legs and slipping off the side of the bed to kneel between her knees.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said, her hips lifting to meet my tongue. Moaning softly, she locked her legs behind my shoulders, and I held her thighs with my hands. Swimming down deep under a silent sea older than time, I kissed her and kissed her until finally she said tightly, ‘Oh, oh my God,’ her back arching, her heels digging into my back. I didn’t stop, just slowed down, letting it happen, holding her tight as she climaxed, tasting her salty wetness, staying with her until her body finally relaxed and her gasping breath returned.

  A minute later, lying beside her again, I touched her nipples lightly with my thumbs as she turned on her side to kiss me. ‘Your turn,’ she breathed. She smoothly pulled me over, onto and into her. We found an easy rhythm, as natural as the dancing, and I began to lose my awareness of everything but the feel and taste and smell of her. Knowing I couldn’t hold back much longer, she took my face in her hands, blew softly against my skin and whispered, ‘Come in me, baby, come in me now.’

  * * *

  I heard a tiny crystal bell somewhere far away and felt my chest being crushed by an unbearable weight of grief and loss.

  LA said, ‘Just give yourself a minute – it’ll pass.’

  Struggling to catch my breath, trying to fight back the tears, I said, ‘What the hell am I supposed to do?’

  ‘You think your job is where you were meant to be,’ LA said. ‘But belonging is much bigger than that. You’re lost, troop.’

  ‘Lost?’

  ‘Lost in your own story,’ she said. ‘And stories don’t end until they end.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘I know. But you will.’

  ‘When?’

  LA spoke, but I heard the voice of Kat Dreyfus: ‘Soon.’

  FORTY-ONE

  The next day, buzzed and restless, agitated – by being so far from the action, I told myself – I paced around the docks while LA sat drinking lemonade with Matt Jory and Dan-something, a middle-aged veterinarian couple from Little Rock, on the rear deck of their houseboat, the Dog Star. She’d run across the two animal doctors in the gift shop and hooked up with them on the grounds that they were both TS Eliot fans, had wicked senses of humour, had been in therapy and liked shrinks.

  I turned for my fifth trip past the boat as Dan was launching into a story about a schizophrenic Jack Russell terrier. I glared at my phone and wondered about the cell coverage in this part of the Ouachitas. I had between two and three bars, but for some reason that wasn’t always a reliable guide up here. I gave the phone an experimental shake, and the ringer sounded. It was a patrol officer named Jenns who’d been detailed to let me know if the GL Owen lead had paid off.

  The signal quality was lousy but the news was good: ‘ . . . tenant, Investigator Mouncey tried earlier but . . . the voicemail cue so she told me . . . eep trying until I got . . .’. In short snatches he gave me a rundown on the suspects: two brothers, Bobby Wayne ‘Nature Boy’ Jewell and Rayford Dougliss Jewell, the latter a motorcycle outlaw known variously as ‘Matt,’ ‘Bone’ and ‘Catfish’, and a skin-head fall partner of theirs by the name of Stonewall Jackson Merritt. The latter two were army vets who’d been associated with Aryan Nation prison gangs during stretches for methamphetamine manufacture and distribution, commercial burglary and armed robbery, and Jenns’ description of Rayford Jewell convinced me he was the Harley-Davidson man. All three had extensive work histories in commercial building construction, usually on slab crews, where they routinely handled concrete hardeners and sealants.

  With all the media attention and so many people working the case, things were coming together fast. A pad of sticky notes matching the sheet on which the lab guys had found the word glowen and the Welsh code impression had been found in Nature Boy’s pocket. Dr Gold’s earrings turned up in a jewellery box that belonged to the elder Jewell’s girlfriend. The Ruger .44 Magnum that had killed Frix had still been in the glove compartment of Merritt’s pickup. The Crime Scene crew found traces of DNA that turned out to be Gold’s in a low-end home food hydrator from his garage.

  I said, ‘Where’d you bust them?’

  ‘ . . . arrested . . . off north Rockland working on a slab crew . . . Hart wants to arraign Thurs . . . ’

  Then I lost the call altogether. I tried a couple of times to get Jenns back but had no luck. Jamming the phone in my pocket, I walked back toward where LA and the vets were sitting, gave her a small fist-pump and refocused on the dog story at the point where the terrier had just stolen a hooker’s push-up bra from a laundromat. A minute or so later, as Dan was setting up the punch line, my phone rang again. It was Jana.

  I said, ‘You ready to sleep in your own bed again, Jay?’

  ‘I sure as hell am,’ she said. The reception had improved, but not much. ‘Does that mean you caught them?’

  ‘Just got the call,’ I said. ‘How’re the girls?’

  ‘Getting . . . little antsy by
now. Not unlike their mother, if you want to know the truth . . . get them back to . . . as long as you’re sure it’s safe, Jim.’

  This was when I spoke possibly the most mistaken words of my life: ‘Everything’s fine, babe,’ I said, smiling across at LA, who was laughing along with the other vet at Dan’s story. ‘Come on home.’

  As LA and I walked back to the marina office to settle our bill, my attention wandered off over the river and through the trees.

  But kept coming back to what hadn’t happened.

  There was a small television on the shelf behind the counter, and it was displaying a file shot of Mark Pendergrass’s puckish face against a scholarly-looking background of bookshelves and certificates. An ugly coldness took possession of my chest, and I looked at LA, who shrugged. The voice-over from the TV reported that the Traverton psychologist, forty-one and a divorced father of two, had been found dead this afternoon in the den of his Lakewood townhouse on the Arkansas side. The face of Joe Holder, a homicide detective I knew from task-force conferences, appeared on the screen. Someone off-camera said, ‘So it was definitely foul play, Detective Holder?’ and stuck a microphone in Holder’s face.

  Holder, evidently not trying out for Public Information Officer this year, gave the reporter an odd look, saying, ‘Yeah, I’d say when you got a man butchered like a beef it’s fair to call that foul play. Most definitely.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  Holder shook his head, and I heard a distant male voice in the background. I thought it said, ‘Jesus Christ, Larry, did you get a look at – ’ before the sound was cut off.