by J. A. Kerley
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MAVERICK: Hey brothers!
HPDRIFTER: Good to hear from you, Maverick. Where you been?
MAVERICK: Shift change. Been working nights, but I’m off. You see that magazine shit about bitches who hate men with balls?
PROMALE: I’ve got to grab some sleep, brothers. TTYL …
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Sinclair sighed and turned off his desktop computer. He reached down the desk and shut off his laptop as well. It was critical that he talk to Drifter, but alone. He’d try again in the near future.
Chapter 18
Our bizarre case took a one-day sidetrack to a court action that kept Harry and me in suits and running to the stand in between objections and ploys by the defense. We did good and I was glad the opposing team was sloppy, nothing near the defense a Nathaniel Bromley might have mounted. The case went to the jury late the second morning, getting us out of the municipal courthouse near eleven, just in time to get a nervous call from Kavanaugh.
“Carson, Harry, I just heard from the Pensacola police. There’s a body in the morgue they want me to look at.”
Pensacola was an hour’s drive down the coast. “Why you?” I asked.
“The woman had my business card in her purse. Her name is Rhonda Doakes. I’m sure I’ve never known anyone by that name. This whole thing is spooky.”
“Maybe she had the card for the address,” I ventured, my cop’s mind generating solutions. “How about your gardeners? Other part-time employees?”
“They’d probably have my business cards,” she said, mentally reviewing companies that kept her home and business running smoothly. “I’ve got a gardening service, housecleaning service, maintenance for my heating and AC, computer-system types, folks who keep the koi pond running smoothly, the place that services my car …” She paused in surprise. “I must hand out twenty cards a year to non-patients.”
“You may never have seen this person, Doc,” I counseled.
“I’m not sure if that helps, Carson. But thanks.”
Kavanaugh’s work didn’t usually involve looking at dead bodies; tough for the first dozen or so. Harry and I volunteered to accompany Kavanaugh on her journey, part out of friendship, part detectively interest.
We made Pensacola in under an hour, entering the cooler room to see a round mound of gowned pathologist sitting and sipping coffee, and a slender black guy in a tan suit leaning a wall and reading the paper. The detective who’d caught the case, I figured. He was young, late twenties or so, meaning he was either good or connected. They rarely went together.
The pathologist was Leo Bates, morbidly obese, mid-forties, a six-foot egg with pumpkin head and a Van-dyke beard. Bates had started his career in Mobile fifteen years back, working with Clair. When it became clear she was the new Leonardo on the forensic pathology scene – or Newton, or Einstein; name your genius – Leo booked for Pensacola, where his two-hundred watts wouldn’t be outshone by Clair’s thousand.
Bates had done well, but harbored an infantile resentment of Clair for being better and brighter, and since I was a friend of Clair, he didn’t care for me either, expressing himself via finely honed passive-aggressivity.
“Well, well, the infamous Piss-it duo,” Bates said, making drama out of leaning to study my feet as I approached.
“I got something on my shoe, Leo?” I asked.
He straightened, wheezing from the effort. “Just seeing if your feet ever touch mortal ground.”
“You should see how they walk across water,” I said, too busy to be bothered by ego games. “You know Harry Nautilus. This is Doctor Nancy Kavanaugh. Your forensics folks found the Doc’s number in the vic’s purse.”
The guy against the wall snapped the paper shut and walked over. “Actually,” he said, “it was me who found the business card. I’m Detective Honus Clayton, Pensacola Homicide.”
“Honus is an upcoming star here in Pennsy,” Bates offered, licking his lips. “Had his name in the paper a half-dozen times this year, Pensacola’s own version of Carson Ryder.”
Clayton was studying a tray of implements. He selected one and held it in his closed hand. “We super law enforcement types have to talk, Leo,” he said. “Why don’t you take a restroom break and we’ll call you when we need you.”
Clayton flipped a shiny object to Bates, who made a clumsy catch. He puzzled at a pair of tweezers in his fat fingers.
“What the hell are these for, Clayton?”
“You got to find that thing, don’t you?”
Bates snarl-whined something nasty we were supposed to infer and not hear. He padded plumply away and Clayton moved into Alpha position, waving us to follow him to the bank of coolers. “We haven’t found anyone who knows the victim well, since she just moved into the neighborhood,” he said, checking a pocket notepad. “She and the next-door lady got on real good, both interested in gardening. Oddly enough, the vic had told the neighbor if she dropped out of sight to call the police.”
“Never good,” Harry said.
Clayton nodded. “After two days of not seeing Miz Doakes, the neighbor called. It was the day the body appeared, so everything went together fast.”
“Where was the body found?” I asked.
“Floating in the river and fouled in mangroves. It was discovered by kayakers.”
“Left in the water?”
“We found a shallow grave-sized hole fifty paces into the mangroves. We figured the body got dumped, sand shoveled over it. There’s a road and bridge two hundred feet upstream. The perp probably parked there, carried the body into the vegetation. They didn’t figure on high tide floating the body free and into the channel. But the same tide obliterated any footprints.”
“Cause of death?” Harry asked.
“Bates is a creepy twelve-year-old at heart, but he knows his stuff. He says Miz Doakes was beaten with fists, probably in weighted gloves.” He looked to Kavanaugh. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but she’s not a pretty sight.”
“You don’t know much yet?” Harry asked.
“We’re finding a lot of dead ends. Things she appeared to be, but wasn’t.”
“I’m ready,” Kavanaugh said, meaning she wasn’t, but was as ready as she was going to get. Clayton grabbed the handle on the cooler door, rolled the body out. The face was covered with a drape. He pulled back the fabric and Kavanaugh looked down.
“Oh shit,” Kavanaugh whispered, the first time I’d ever heard her curse.
My eyes went to the face of the dead woman and I felt the hard shock of recognition, despite the purple, busted-bone damage to the face. It was the woman we’d known, albeit briefly, as Gail.
The woman who’d made it through the tunnel to a brand-new life.
Kavanaugh’s place was closer on the return trip, so we regrouped at Casa Kavanaugh, pushing through her front door at five p.m.
“Doakes was in the system four months back,” I argued after Doc K had brought bottles of Pete’s Wicked Ale. “It’s the same killer.”
“Not so fast,” Harry said. “Gail – I mean Doakes’s eyes and hair were intact, her breasts were undamaged. She was chucked into a swamp, not set in a tableau of garbage and filth. It’s a different killer, Carson.”
“Maybe it only looks different to throw suspicion somewhere else.”
Harry looked to Kavanaugh, sipping white vino and watching the tennis match of theories. “Doc? How about some refereeing here.”
I looked expectantly toward the Doc, but she came down in the other court, handing the set to Harry. “The person who savaged Lainie Krebbs and butterfly Lady was driven to hurt women and display them as trash and sewage. Rhonda Doakes’s death was horrible, but lacking symbolic attacks on her womanhood.”
“Bottom line?” I asked.
“Doakes’s murderer was killing one woman. The other murderer was killing all women.”
Chapter 19
We called Sal and told her we were brainstorming and drinking good stuff and did she
want in? Sal lived in Spanish Fort and Kavanaugh’s place was nearby. She arrived at half past six and Harry revisited our conclusions.
“There is one tie to all of them,” Sal said, “same killer or not. The underground railroad. Three dead women, each thinking she’d escaped an abusive relationship.”
“Unfortunately,” Harry said, “the underground railroad is a big and anonymous place.”
“Got a US map?” I asked Kavanaugh. She scooted away, back seconds later with an atlas. I turned to the continental states and set the book on the floor, crouching and using my finger as a pointer.
“Here’s a Boulder to Mobile line, moving southeast. This would be an approximation of the line an escaping woman would travel.”
“A very rough approximation,” Sal said. “The true route would be more zigzaggy.”
“Still, the result is the same. Now extend the line past Boulder and toward the northwest …” I moved my finger about five hundred miles and into Idaho.
Harry knelt beside me to see the cities. “Boise is on the line,” he said.
“We’ve got probabilities of a woman who went from the Floribama coast to Boulder, one running from Boulder to the Floribama coast, and another who escaped from Boise to here.”
“Damn,” Sal said. “They crossed the same geographical region.”
“Somewhere between Boulder and Mobile they were identified, either pulled from the system at that time, or followed.”
Everyone went silent, studying the map. It was a huge swath of territory.
“There’s only one way to deal with this,” Sal said after a minute. “And we’re all thinking it right now.”
“Put eyes in the system,” Harry said.
“Exactly. Have someone pinball through, node to node, see who looks weird or dangerous. Our person’s got to be undercover all the way, since the killer could be anywhere.”
“It won’t be easy finding the right cop,” Harry said. “Who’ve we got?”
“Me,” Sal said, like it was a done deal. “We’ll invent a history and I’ll ride the subterranean choo-choo.”
I held up my hand. “Sal, you’re a Missing Persons genius, but …”
“Don’t Missing Persons me, Carson. I spent three years in Vice, remember? Half of ’em undercover with some of the nastiest vermin to slither through Mobile. I got the instincts, the radar, the acting chops. You want a terrified wife running from a head-case hubby?” Sal’s eyes watered, her voice went quivery. “H-he’s gonna kill me, I know he is. I can’t spend another week there, he said he’d g-gut me like a deer. You’ve got to help me get away …”
Sally tucked her face in her hands and began weeping.
“Jesus,” Harry whispered.
Sal’s face and voice snapped back to normal. “How was that?”
“Heart-rending,” I said, impressed. “But it’s a crapshoot. You might never pass through the section where the killer’s lurking.”
“I’ll shift my final destination around. How many places did Gail stay … eight? I’ll see if I can wangle at least a dozen, staying close to the corridor she might have taken, You guys can stay nearby. If anyone suspicious appears, waltz in and check ’em out.”
I looked at Harry, figuring he too was thinking this the quickest way to force an answer from the system. But Kavanaugh held up her hand, stepping into the Devil’s Advocate role.
“It assumes too much, Sally. You’ll be in a blind tunnel connected to nothing but other blind tunnels. You might not see the perp coming.”
“A freak like that, Doc? He’ll stand out. And anyway, what’s Plan B?”
Kavanaugh thought a moment. “I don’t have one.”
Harry shrugged. “Then this seems our best shot.”
“You’ll help sell this to the brass, Doc?” Sal asked Kavanaugh. An operation of this scope needed permission from above. Kavanaugh was a renowned shrink who donated expensive time to the department. The brass respected her and listened to her input.
“I’m too worn to think,” Kavanaugh said, stretching and yawning. “Let’s regroup in the morning.”
A shiny blue truck crept past a darkened house four blocks from the University of Colorado, the moon shining over the truck’s surface, as clean and bright as polished glass. Treeka parked in the shadows between streetlamps, exited, limping, looking over her shoulder, as if fearful of ambush from the closed shoe store or hole-in-the-wall bar across the street. Shooting a glance at the second floor of the tavern, she saw only darkened windows. She crept to the hatch and removed a bulging suitcase holding everything she owned at this precise moment.
She paused on the sidewalk, turning to the vehicle, resisting the urge to spit on its mirror-bright hood. She limped to the door and knocked three times. The square woman named Carol reached out for Treeka’s arm and almost jerked her off her feet to get her inside.
There were three serious-faced women in the center. The clock on the desk changed from 9:35 to 9:36. Treeka saw a newspaper on a chair, folded open to another story about the dead lady from the water plant. Treeka had seen the news on TV, but not much. The reporters said the cops didn’t have a lot to go on.
“You sure you weren’t followed?” the square woman said, poking her head out the door and checking from side to side.
“It’s Tommy’s poker night,” Treeka said. “He never gets in before three.”
“Whose truck?”
“His,” Treeka said. “He an’ a buddy take turns drivin’ to save gas. They play poker over in Platteville. I never drove his truck before. I ain’t driven anything in almost two years.” Treeka thought a moment, said, “I forgot an’ left something in the truck.”
“Get it fast.”
The ladies looked less worried, knowing Treeka’s husband was forty miles away. She slipped outside and pretended to grab something from the passenger seat. She closed the door, pulled out the key and bent low. Holding the key tight, she scrawled deep into the paint below the window:
I cant take it no more
She started to turn away, stopped, returned to the truck and scratched letters under the previous words that spanned the width of the door panel:
P.S. FUCK U
Treeka limped back to the center. It was a done deal: using those words and injuring Tommy’s beloved truck would mean he’d kill her for sure. There was no return, Treeka knew; the intimidation, the prison-like scrutiny, that damned yellow dress, the chokings, the three of every-fucking-thing, the relieving herself with the door open so Tommy could watch … She would escape or die trying.
“Get the truck out of here,” the square woman snapped at a tall skinny black lady with round glasses that made her face look like an owl. “Drive it to Denver and leave it in long-term parking at the airport. Wear gloves and remember there are cameras all over –”
“Christ, Carol,” the skinny woman said. “We’ve done this before. Calm down.”
The square-faced woman closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. You guys know the drill.”
Both other women disappeared into the night. That left Treeka and Carol. “When you called, you said he’d hurt you again,” Carol said. “That’s why you’re limping?”
“He punched and kicked me. It hurts but I can walk. I’ll run fast enough for the Olympics if it gets me free.”
“That’s the spirit, Treeka,” the woman said. “Are you scared of the path you’re about to take?”
“Down to my toes.”
“Stay that way,” the woman said. “It could keep you alive. And by the way, from now on your name is Darleen.”
Darleen. Treeka tasted her escape name on her tongue. It tasted fine.
“Before we get you started on your trip,” Carol asked, “is there anything else you need from us?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Treeka/Darleen said. “Could you please make me another of those blue birds?”
Chapter 20
Kavanaugh was at the department when Harry and I arrived in the morning, sitting in Tom Mason’s
office drinking coffee. We regrouped in the conference room, Tom wanting to hear our plans. Sal ran up from Missing Persons.
“I gave the operation a lot of thought,” Kavanaugh said. “I suspect the perp feels completely protected by the anonymous nature of the system. A dozen more women might be killed before he makes a mistake. I’ll put my imprimatur on the idea.”
“I’ve already packed my bag,” Sal said. “Two pairs of shoes, four pairs of panties, and one nine millimeter.”
Harry and I chuckled. Kavanaugh cleared her throat. “There’s a drawback or two to the plan, Sally. You’re known by the staff of the WCC in Mobile.”
“So what? No one in the system will know me.”
“We know nothing about how the killer selects his prey, or where. The undercover plant has to be fully anonymous.”
The Doc had an excellent point: We couldn’t assume anyone’s innocence. But Sal had an immediate counter-move.
“I’ll fly to Boulder and get in the system, move south. That’s even better because it’ll bring me through the same selection of handlers, especially if I ping-pong my destinations. That handle your objections, Doc?”
I figured it would. But Kavanaugh had done a lot of thinking. “There’s no time to be delicate, Sally,” she said. “You’re what, thirty-nine?”
Sally scowled. “Thirty-eight. For two more weeks.”
“The other women were in their late twenties, early thirties. Plus they were both, uh, more on the slender side. If we’re going to put a target in front of the killer, we should pick a type we know attracts him. Carson, Harry – you’ve dealt with this sort of monster before – am I right?”
“If we’re setting out a meal to entice the perp,” I admitted, “it’s best to cook what we know he likes.”
“Lousy metaphor, Carson,” Tom Mason said. “But I have to agree.”
“I may not be the perfect meal,” Sal said. “But at least I’m food. Who else around here fits the bill?”
Kavanaugh reached into her bag and retrieved a folder. “I found one more candidate.” She stood and stuck her head out the door and gestured. Footsteps approached the door until a woman in uniform stood at the threshold.
