Dr. Strange Beard

by Penny Reid

  Finished with my message, I glanced up at Roscoe again, surreptitiously putting my phone away. He continued staring out the window, but his gaze was unfocused, and he’d stopped flexing his jaw. Instead, he was biting his bottom lip thoughtfully, releasing it, pulling it through his teeth, and biting it again.

  I took advantage of his inattention to openly study this new, tall Roscoe. I had so many questions.

  He was so different, and at the same time so familiar. In addition to his height, he’d gained width, all muscle by the looks of his shoulders, the bulk of his chest, and the trimness of his waist.

  Huh. Maybe he is a martial arts expert.

  It was like someone had taken my friend and put his essence in the body of this . . . this . . . man.

  The way he’d spoken to his father had also been a surprise, and the way he’d looked at him, like he might call upon the wrath of God from the Old Testament—not Jesus, Jesus was too warm and fuzzy, except that one time in the temple—I’m talking about starving people for thirty or forty years just for putting a pretty cow in their town square.

  New Roscoe was fierce.

  Fierce wasn’t my thing. I preferred my guys quiet, thoughtful, and reflective, slow to anger and quick to theorizing. There wasn’t much that got my engine running like a good theory, amiright ladies?

  Tall and bookish; thick glasses not thick necks; that was my bag.

  But ferocity suited this Roscoe. Ferocity looked good on him. Fierce was definitely his color.

  Also, there was no denying the truth, this Roscoe was hot.

  Not that it mattered, but hot is neither my thing nor not my thing. Hot guys are fine, not hot guys are also fine. In my experience, whether a guy was outwardly hot didn’t make much of a difference in the long run. All men are fugly as soon as they demonstrate an inability to carry on a conversation about issues that matter. Or if they don’t empty the dishwasher. Or if they poop with the bathroom door open.

  No one wants to see that. Even I—ye old goddess of crime fighting—have accepted that some mysteries in life are better left unsolved, such as the facial expressions associated with a boyfriend’s constipation.

  Hard. Pass.

  Wait. Where was I?

  Ah, yes. Tall, fierce, hot. New Roscoe.

  I looked him over, nodding once to myself and thinking, Good for him.

  Yes. Good for him. Good for Roscoe growing up, and living his life, and finding his own way, and becoming this tall, fierce, hot man.

  Good for him.

  Looking away from his square jaw and handsome face, I rubbed my sternum. An inexplicable ache and a creeping sense of melancholy settled in my chest.

  More nostalgia.

  I ignored it. When that didn’t work, I forcibly pushed it away because capturing Darrell Winston should be on the forefront of my mind. If he slipped away from Nelson and Lundqvist, I would have to be prepared next time, and there would be a next time. Remembering how Winston had stared after his youngest son made me certain of that. I had a hunch Winston would be sticking around.

  Sucking in a quiet, bracing breath, I turned back to this guy I used to know, pleased when I felt nothing but dispassionate interest in the man, and how I might use him to help me capture his father.

  “Hey,” I said, putting on a smile and stepping closer. “I can make a pot of coffee, if you want to—”

  I didn’t get any farther than that, because Roscoe flinched. He darted a quick look in my direction—a haunted, discomfited look that didn’t quite meet my eyes—and promptly walked around me.

  “Uh, Roscoe?” I called after him, too surprised to do anything else other than watch him leave, which he did.

  That’s right. He left. He walked out and across the lot, opened his car door, slid inside, started his engine, and left, heading due south.

  He disappeared.

  Huh.

  I crossed my arms, unable to stop the bitter thought, Just like old times.

  Chapter Three

  “Humans, not places, make memories.”

  Ama Ata Aidoo

  *Simone*

  East Tennessee had a population of approximately 800,000. Twenty-four dead bodies weren’t going to escape the notice of law enforcement. However, they seemed to escape the notice of the locals. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

  “Tell me you got him.”

  I didn’t say hi, I didn’t ask about their day, I didn’t comment on the pile of dishes stacked in the sink—but I did notice them—I got right to the point. Twenty-four unsolved murders, all dates of death clustered around the end of June/beginning of July for the last two years. It may have been late-March, but it felt like the clock was ticking.

  Nelson and Lundqvist exchanged a quick look, with Lundqvist exhaling a frustrated breath and Nelson shaking her head. “No sign of him.”

  Damn.

  That explained why they hadn’t returned my last text asking for a status update. There was nothing to report.

  Even though I’d been assigned full time to the case squad somewhat recently, I was already ready to be done. Based on what I’d learned about these case agents in the short time we’d known each other, I suspected they were both anxious to get this thing resolved as well.

  I studied them, the disgruntled narrowing of their eyes, the unhappy curve of their lips, confirming that they were just as frustrated as I was.

  Hisako Nelson had been working undercover as a stripper at the G-Spot for nineteen months, since the first string of murders two years ago this coming June. The strip club was frequented by all the motorcycle clubs in the area. She’d been assigned just after the eighth body had been found. Hisako had seniority on the case, which meant she gave me and Lundqvist our day-to-day direction.

  Oscar Lundqvist had been brought in when the number of dead bikers officially reached eighteen last July. That was nine months ago. The body count had risen to twenty-four, but they’d all been murdered in June, according to the coroner in Knoxville.

  Lundqvist was currently working his way into the Black Demons motorcycle club, playing the part of a potential new recruit. The Demons had been one of the clubs hit hardest by the string of murders with seven members dead.

  Of course, there was Isaac Sylvester, and I knew for a fact he was more than ready to find the killer.

  Neither Nelson nor Lundqvist knew Isaac’s identity, though they knew he existed. More precisely, they knew the bureau had someone inside the Iron Wraiths, but they didn’t know who. I suspected Isaac would be the reason we ultimately broke the case. That was, if he survived long enough.

  Like me, Isaac Sylvester had grown up in Green Valley. Unlike me, he’d joined the army just after high school, disappeared for several years and returned a changed person. Everyone in town thought he’d turned to the dark side, including my parents.

  He hadn’t turned to the dark side. He’d been an undercover ATF agent. But when people started dying, Isaac had been loaned out to the bureau, and now here we were.

  “Did you bring any doughnuts?” Lundqvist asked, his eyes widening with a hint of hope.

  I thought about saying, “You don’t deserve doughnuts, Lundqvist.”

  Instead, I nodded, throwing my thumb over my shoulder. “They’re in the car.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice, excusing himself with a lopsided smile and darting out of the room.

  Nelson and I exchanged a look. Her dark brown eyes beneath perfectly manicured eyebrows felt judgmental as they moved over me, but I knew it was nothing personal. Nelson had an air about her, like she’d been royalty in another life. Or maybe this life. Whatever, it was just her way.

  Also, her posture was magnificent. When I was around her, I stopped slouching. I’d never experienced better posture by association, but there you go. True story.

  Nelson gestured to one of the four chairs set around the small kitchen table. “Take a seat and tell me what happened.”

  I sat in the chair she offered, finding myself mimicki
ng her posture, my shoulders didn’t touch the back of the chair. “It was completely random. He seemed to be on his own, no meetup, no posse.”

  Her gaze narrowed, causing the epicanthal fold of her eyes to be more pronounced. “You’re telling me Winston just showed up? Out of the blue on your first day full time?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. I was serving coffee, glanced out at the lot, and spotted a car I recognized. Then I saw two figures standing and talking by the car. I recognized the younger one as Roscoe Winston.”

  Her thick black lashes swept down and then up, her gaze turning fuzzy for a second. “The youngest. The vet.”

  “The veterinarian, that’s right.”

  Her stare refocused on me. “You knew him. The two of you went to school together, right?”

  I nodded, giving her nothing more.

  Despite my best efforts, the irritating nostalgia from earlier hadn’t dissipated. Instead, the long-forgotten memories were floating to the surface of my mind. Bits and pieces of conversations from my childhood and adolescence, life moments I’d wallpapered over or packed up and put in mental storage, darted in and out of my vision like gnats.

  On the drive over, I remembered how Roscoe and I had played Monopoly, one game spanning eight years, from the age of eight to sixteen. It had been his idea. He’d watched his sister Ashley and her childhood pal Jackson James run a game for nearly as long, and he liked how they’d added their own spin to it, printed their own money, and made clay models for skyscrapers.

  We’d added our own spin on it, too. But instead of skyscrapers, we’d added a seedy, criminal element, with smugglers and thieves. The houses became safe houses, the hotels became business fronts for money laundering, and if you could steal from the bank without the other person noticing, you could.

  Going to jail was never a respite from landing on each other’s property. If one of us ended up behind bars, we had to stop the game, and the jailbird was forced to do push-ups in the prison yard—the middle of his room—once a day, make the other person lunch and fork over his or her real-life allowance for a week.

  It had been so, so much fun.

  Sometimes we engaged in heated debates and fought. Sometimes we played FBI (he was always the bad guy). Sometimes we baked in my mother’s kitchen. Sometimes we purposefully got lost in the woods, but never seemed to have a problem finding the way home at suppertime. Sometimes we simply sat and read together. Or read to each other.

  I frowned at the amalgamation of memories, now jumbled and knotted together like one of those long, bright orange extension cords, wrapped badly and shoved in a corner of a garage. It was an apt analogy, my brain as a garage seemed about right. But a super awesome, clean, tidy garage, with a place for everything and everything in its place.

  Pay no attention to those haphazardly discarded extension cords in the corner.

  “You recognized Roscoe Winston’s car?” Nelson asked, bringing me back to the present.

  I nodded again, taking a deep breath. “Yes. His brothers—the twins, Beau and Duane—gave it to him for his sixteenth birthday. It’s a 1955 Chevrolet 3100.”

  “Crap. Where do they fall in the family tree again?” Nelson turned toward the laptop she’d left open on the table. “There’s so many of these Winston brothers and they all look the same.”

  “Do you think so?” I didn’t think so.

  Roscoe looked like a combination of Jethro, who was the oldest, and Billy, the second brother. He had Jethro’s lean frame and mannerisms, and Billy’s electric blue eyes and well-groomed dark hair and beard.

  But Roscoe didn’t look anything like Cletus, number three in the family. He had messy light brown hair, curly and chaotic, with streaks of blond. His eyes were greenish, like Jethro’s. He was also shorter, stockier, and his beard was longer.

  Whereas the twins, Beau and Duane, only looked like each other, with bright red hair and cornflower blue eyes.

  “Ah, yes. I remember seeing a picture of that car.” Nelson nodded at something she saw on her laptop screen. “The Winston twins run the auto shop and they all seem to drive classic cars.” She sounded like she was speaking mostly to herself, clicking around and waiting for the screen to load again.

  It was an ancient laptop in terms of latest technological advances, but we were lucky to have it. It was our link in the field to all the various law enforcement databases—and there were many, many databases—scattered across the government web.

  “No. Cletus, he’s the third brother, and Beauford, one of the twins, run the auto shop. The other twin, Duane, lives with his wife, Jessica James-Winston, in Italy.”

  “Cletus is married to the baker?”

  “Yes. Cletus and Jennifer Winston are married, and she’s a baker,” I confirmed.

  “No kids . . .” Nelson’s eyes narrowed as she read. “And Jennifer Winston was arrested for—”

  “That was years ago.” I waved away Jennifer Winston’s arrest record. It wasn’t pertinent to the present case.

  “Cletus is the third, and Ashley is the fourth.” Nelson continued reading. “And Ashley is married to Andrew Runous, one daughter.” Nelson paused, her eyebrows jumping. “Ah, yes. Senator Runous’s son, the senior senator from Texas.”

  “Correct.”

  “That’s quite a family connection.” Nelson grabbed a pen and wrote something in her notebook, continuing. “Beauford is with the famous one. Stacy something.”

  I wavered, feeling protective of both Beau and his partner Shelly, not Stacy. “Shelly Sullivan. She’s a famous artist.”

  I really liked Shelly. She and Beau had come into the diner every Saturday I was in town for the last five years and they were freaking adorable. There was something about the way she meticulously cut her banana that I found soothing. The way he looked at her and the way she looked at him, talk about ungainly feelings.

  They almost made me want a life partner. Someone who knew, accepted, and cherished me on a fundamental level.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Ultimately, I knew my cloth wasn’t cut that way. I liked my own space, only cleaning up after myself, working as much as I wanted and going to sleep when—or if—I wanted. So as much as I liked the idea of a partner who looked at me the way Beau Winston looked at Shelly Sullivan when she cut her bananas into perfect, one-fourth inch cylinders, I wanted to sleep in the middle of the bed, consult no one on my decisions, and shower at my leisure even more.

  “No, wait, I’m thinking of Jethro Winston.” Nelson snapped her fingers, pointing at something she read on the screen. “Jethro Winston is married to Sienna Diaz, the filmmaker. They have three kids.” Then to me she asked, “Their address is listed as Green Valley. Do they live here? I haven’t seen them.”

  I shook my head and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve seen Jethro maybe three times in the last five years, always with one or more of his kids and always a quick stop in to pick up doughnuts. Maybe their permanent address is here, but my guess is he and the kids go where she goes.”

  “He used to be a park ranger though, right?” Nelson scrolled through a page, her eyes scanning the contents.

  “Jethro was a park ranger. Runous and Jethro used to work together at the Park before Jethro married Sienna.”

  “And they had kids. And now Jethro is a full-time dad.” A glimmer of respect shone in Nelson’s eyes, there and gone in an instant. Her attention flickered to me. “William Winston, state congressman, is the one engaged to your sister.”

  I carefully schooled my expression. “Correct.”

  Nelson examined me before saying, “Everyone is related to everyone in this town.”

  “Not everyone.”

  “Oh really? Duane—the other twin—is married to Jessica James-Winston. She is Sheriff James’s adopted daughter, and Jackson James’s —sheriff’s deputy—adopted sister.” Nelson spoke slowly, clearly trying to connect mental dots and understand the web of relationships.

  I nodded, not adding
that Jessica James-Winston wasn’t just the sheriff’s adopted daughter, but also his niece on his wife’s side, the biological daughter of Janet James’s sister, but the biological father was unknown. That level of detail would just confuse Nelson. Heck, it would confuse me if I didn’t already know all these people. Plus, again, it wasn’t pertinent to the present situation.

  “That means,” she went on, “the Winston family is related to the local sheriff, a movie star, a senator, your family—”

  “Billy and Dani aren’t married.”

  “—who owns the mill, and your grandfather is a judge, and your mother owns those restaurants, and your dad owns a bank—”

  Oh brother.

  “He doesn’t own the bank. He’s a vice president.”

  “Whatever.” She looked away from the computer screen, releasing a tired sounding sigh. “Let’s get back on track. Tell me what happened tonight.”

  “I didn’t recognize the target right away, only identifying him from the window as an older man fitting the description.” But I had a hunch. “As soon as I was outside and I approached, I made positive identification.”

  “That’s when you messaged us?”

  “No.” Much to my regret.

  I continued with my report, leaving out the awkward hug, but filling her in on the argument between father and son, how Roscoe had stormed off, how the target had watched him go, and how I’d made contact as soon as it was feasible. Nelson listened thoughtfully, as did Lundqvist when he finally returned with the two boxes of Nut House doughnuts I’d brought.

  My narrative at an end, I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. Sitting perfectly straight was a pain in the neck, I didn’t know how Nelson managed it all the time.

  Nelson and I stared at each other as Lundqvist started on his second doughnut.