by Corey Brown
Standing next to Cody, T'biah whispers, “Find Todd. You are right, he is in trouble. Find him, keep him.”
Then T’biah leaves, slipping back to the hospital.
Find Todd.
Keep him.
Cody stiffens, his expression one of surprise and confusion. Find Todd? Keep him? Where did that come from? What did that mean?
“You okay?” Derek says, glancing sideways at Harris, wondering if he noticed the change in Cody’s aspect.
Cody frowns. The sounds in his head seem to be getting louder, stronger.
“I gotta go,” he says. “I have to get back home.” He looks at Derek. “Don’t walk out, not yet. Something is gonna to happen, it’ll all break loose then you’ll see. You’ll know what we are saying is true.”
Cody looks at Harris. “Something big is going to happen.”
Chapter 23
Interstate Ten is busier, now, than when Cody traveled it four hours ago but traffic is moving. He does not feel the need to watch for a tail. It is not because Cody has discounted the possibility, he just does not care anymore. It is one o’clock in the afternoon and he is south of Baton Rouge, from here New Orleans is eighty miles downstream.
Cody had not wanted to leave Doctor Harris and Derek so abruptly. Cody knows Derek probably remained behind with Harris trying to convince him to forget everything. Cody is certain Derek thinks he is losing it. The look was all over Derek’s face. And who knows? Maybe the idea is not far from the truth. But the urge to leave, the need to find Todd, to….what was it? Keep him? The need to keep Todd had been all but overwhelming. It was like some wild urge to flee to safer ground only in reverse: Cody is heading into the danger zone.
We’ve been friends for a long time, Derek had said. Cody thinks about that. It was true. They had been friends for a long time. More than just friends. Except for Jamie, Derek is Cody’s closest confidant. When it comes down to business, Derek is the only one Cody really trusts, the only one who will go the last mile. But in spite of the terse comments and his obvious doubt, Derek had not walked away. He had not told Cody to go scratch himself.
When Derek had reminded Cody of the precarious situation they were all in, when he had said they were out on a limb that wouldn’t hold them, Cody had taken it to mean that Derek was abandoning ship, cutting loose. But Derek had not actually done so.
Cody felt a spike of guilt when he contemplated just how this mess could destroy Derek’s career. Worse, he worried Derek was just trying to zero out his loan from the Bank of Favors. That is not what Cody wanted. As far as he was concerned an account was never opened.
Making his own way back to New Orleans, Derek Simmons thinks about his friend. He worries that Cody is in over his head, worries about how far this thing will go, how far he himself will go. One thing is certain, Cody is losing it. Reflexively, Derek shakes his head, shakes off that thought. He does not want that to be true, hopes it isn’t.
Before a gun running interdiction, before that flak jacket-laden, midnight swim in the Gulf, and long before the Cubans had snared Derek’s brother, their relationship had flashed out of nowhere, the result of a chance meeting.
“An agent,” Cody had said, wiping his mouth. He and Derek had each slammed back two shots of tequila. “This is just unbelievable. It’s bad enough I had to appear in this three-ring circus and you turn out to be an FBI agent.”
“The best New Orleans has,” Derek said, a crooked smile playing across his face.
They were in a place called BBC—Before Building Codes, a twenties, prohibition-style bar in the warehouse district. High ceilings, exposed wooden beams, shadowy lighting and bartenders who understood how to make a drink.
“Jesus, I cannot believe I had to testify on Mough’s behalf,” Cody said. “And tell me this isn’t fucked up, two cops— one of them a Spiffy Agent in Charge with the FBI, so here we are saying Mough didn’t do it, testifying under oath no less, and Freeburg still gets a conviction. We say a mob wise guy is innocent of killing a mob boss and the DA still takes him down. What’s up with that? Half the time, I can’t make a parking ticket stick and the one time I say a bad guy is innocent no one listens. Is that messed up, or what?”
“I know what you mean,” Derek had said. “The Bureau has been after Kozlowski and Mough for years, but to get him this way…. I don’t know.”
“Walter didn’t kill Kozlowski,” Cody had said, staring into his empty shot glass. “It was an accident. He just wanted the baseball cards.”
“You believe that?” Derek had said. “Baseball cards, all of this because of your goddamned baseball cards.”
Cody had shrugged. “What can I say? I wanted them back.”
The waitress set two margaritas and two more shots of Cuervo Gold on the table.
“Thanks,” Derek had said.
“Anything else?”
“More when our glasses are empty.” It was Cody who had spoken.
“I can do that.” She smiled and turned away. She wore a short dress and had legs that went all the way up. They watched her walk away before hoisting the shot glasses.
“How about it?” Cody said, after a lick of salt and a long swallow of margarita. “You getting shit over this?”
“Oh yeah. The guys in my office are having the time of their lives. You?”
“Uh-huh. I’m getting my ass kicked every day. Some of the boys don’t have much use for me, now. They figure this was the perfect opportunity to nail Mough and I tried to get in the way.”
“Seriously? You in any kind of trouble?”
“Nothing I can’t handle. I’ve danced with these idiots before, I can take care of myself.”
“Really, I’m serious,” Derek had said. “If you need help, just call. I’ll be there.”
Cody had looked at Derek.
There was a moment’s depth in his gaze then Cody had smiled drunkenly and said, “Like I need the FBI. I’d be better off with my dead aunt.”
They had talked about more than just the case. Derek talked about growing up in Newbury, Maryland, a little town below the Fall Line on the western side of Chesapeake Bay. He told Cody about going home one Thanksgiving to find his quiet little town buzzing about a major crime, a crime that had international connections. Derek had told Cody about how, quite by accident, he had met the city’s public defender, Ellie Buchanan, and for a few impetuous, infatuated moments he had considered moving back home and asking her to marry him.
Cody told Derek why he had decided to join the police force. How one night, on the way home from a poker game, he’d stopped by the Saint Charles Tavern to have a beer.
Skirting Baton Rouge, Derek signals right and slips over a lane in order to stay on I-10. He smiles to himself, thinking about Cody’s story. There always seemed to be a waitress.
“Man she was something,” Cody had said, talking about the waitress in the Saint Charles Tavern. “She was so cute and the way she said, ‘Hey darlin’, I’ll be with you in a minute. Have a seat wherever.’ Shit, I was inside out. I told her okay, thinking I’d like to have a seat wherever she was sitting, and asked for a Turbo Dog.”
“Not an Amber?’ Derek had asked. “You wanted the Dog?”
Cody had shrugged. “Beer is beer. If it makes you feel better, they were out of Turbo.”
As Cody told it, he had taken a seat next to the plate glass window overlooking the street, thinking about his future. He had just quit a low-level management job in Overland Park, Kansas and returned home with no serious job prospects. At twenty-three, Cody was unemployed, living back at home with his aunt, and was restless. In the waste bin were sixteen months of sitting behind a desk, four years at Northern Illinois University, and a lot of cash.
Across the small room of the Saint Charles Tavern, four cops were finishing dinner, stuffing food in their mouths and draining their own beers. One by one they stood, each adjusting their belts, hiking up their trousers. Then they headed to the door.
“Hey guys,” the waitress
had called. “Hold on, your check.”
They all stopped and looked at her.
“It’s okay,” the bartender said, waving them out. “She’s new. Forget it.”
“From that moment,” Cody had said. “I was no longer at loose ends. I knew where I was going. I can’t quite explain it. I mean, I’d always been a cop wanna-be. Hell, I was actually jealous of my buddy, Doug Kramer, when he became a cop. But I guess I wasn’t ready. But at that moment, when I saw those guys in the Saint Charles Tavern walk out without paying, I was ready.”
Accelerating to pass a school bus then sliding back into the right lane of Interstate Ten, Derek thinks about that, wonders why Cody was suddenly ready to be a cop after he saw four of New Orleans finest skip out on a restaurant bill. They had never talked about that angle and, oddly enough, Derek had never really considered it. But what did that mean about Cody? Did he enjoy the undue influence cops could exert? Did he go for abuse of power?
Maybe.
Derek could make the case out of The Skulls alone . There was no doubt Cody had gone after the gang with what self -appointed impunity.
But another memory comes to Derek, a conversation before he and Cody ever met. Robert Murdock, the DEA agent, had been certain Cody would say whatever the District Attorney wanted in order to convict Walter Mough. Derek remembered how confident Murdock was about the conviction, about the cop’s testimony. But Cody had not towed the line. He had stood nose to nose with the DA, faced down his peers in order to defend a man who did not deserve protection, but was innocent nonetheless. So what did that mean about Cody?
Derek remembers how Murdock knew the outcome of the case before it even went to trial. In the end, Murdock had been right. Wrong about Cody, but right about the conviction. How had he known?
«»
The electronic chirp of his cell phone startles Cody.
“Briggs.”
“Cody, Fletcher here. I got your message. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.”
“No problem, I appreciate the call.”
“You heard about my office?”
“Yeah, I heard,” Cody says. “Tough break, how’re you going to work?”
“We’re setting up a temporary shop right now. Tulane is going let us use their facilities for a while.” Fletcher sighs. “I’m sorry, Cody, Nick is gone and I don’t have much on him.”
“I know,” Cody says. “The evidence is ruined, tell me what you remember.”
“That’s just it. About five minutes after you and Slater and Hansen left, I received a message from Assistant DA Reese Pickett insisting that we meet right away. I never got back to Nick.
“You didn’t even start the autopsy?”
“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry, Cody.”
“What did Reese want,” Cody says. “Anything important?”
“That’s what’s so damned frustrating. By the time I arrived at her office, Reese had been called into Judge Blackman’s chambers. I waited around for a while, grabbed lunch, went back but she was still unavailable. By then it was too late to work on Nick, I went home. I’m sorry, Cody, if I’d had any idea...”
“So, you never met with Reese?”
“Uh-uh, she never showed.”
“And she didn’t call to re-schedule?”
The conversation drops into silence.
Cody waits a few moments then says, “Fletcher?”
“Yeah, yeah, I was just thinking. No, Reese never called to re-schedule. What are you saying, Cody? That Reese is involved with burning down the coroner’s office?”
“I’m not saying anything. But it’s an interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”
“That’s absurd,” Fletcher says, a little too quickly. “Reese isn’t a player. Hell, she’s the most junior lawyer the District Attorney has. You think she’s involved?”
Cody changes lanes, touches the brakes to pull his speed down from eighty-seven.
“I don’t know,” Cody says, with a sigh. “No, probably not. You said you got a message from Pickett? Did you speak to her directly?”
“No, I don’t take calls during an autopsy but a lab tech brought me the message slip. He told me Reese said it was very urgent.”
“Pickett might not have even called,” Cody says. “Probably didn’t. But somebody wanted to delay the autopsy long enough to torch the place.”
A mental image of a man in a swamp forms in Cody’s mind. A snake is wrapped around the man’s chest, its fangs buried in his neck. Cody knows he’s had this thought before, but when and why? Did it have anything to do with Nick?
A horn blasts and Cody jerks the steering wheel, pulling out of his drift into the left lane. He waves an apology to the other driver.
“Tell me something,” Cody says. “I know Nick had been torn apart by the ‘gators but what about what was left?”
“I don’t follow, what do you mean?”
“Did anything about his remains seem unusual, anything inconsistent with an alligator attack?”
“Well, now that you mention it,” Fletcher says, slowly. “We X-ray every corpse and I did get a look at the film before you and the other two showed up.”
“And?”
“Nick’s ribs were broken, every one of them. Broken ribs are not uncommon in an alligator attack, but not all of them. That is a strange.”
“Anything else?” Cody says. “Odd puncture wounds, maybe on his neck, anything like that?”
“Cody, Nick’s head was severed, there wasn’t much neck left. And like I said, I had to leave. I never really got started.”
“Okay,” Cody says. “Thanks. Good luck getting things back in order.”
“Hey, I’m really sorry about Nick.”
Now on the outskirts of New Orleans, Cody looks up at the overhead road sign. His exit is in three miles. He is almost back in His town. Once more, Todd becomes foremost in his mind.
Cody thinks about how he bolted out of the meeting with Derek and Harris, knows that Derek will worry about his behavior but he had to find Todd, keep him. Whatever the hell that means.
As he thinks this, Cody understands in his heart if not his head. He may not know precisely, but Cody understands.
Keep Todd? Jesus, it is what he has been trying to do for the last thirty-six hours. But Lucas is the only one keeping him. And now that weird sense of urgency comes on again, an exigent feeling surrounds Cody and he thinks of that smile, Todd’s parting expression: a smile to hide behind.
Then it comes to Cody. Lucas is keeping Todd, involving him, using him. That’s what the sad smile was all about. Todd’s natural father has pulled Todd into something, Cody is certain of it. Lucas has drawn Todd into something that he cannot escape nor admit.
But what is it? Lucas is an attorney, a corporate lawyer. He works for U.S. AutoParts, a national automotive parts retailer headquartered in New Orleans. Lucas’s world was one of corporate litigation and finance. Cody wonders about Lucas’s job. What could he have done that would hurt Todd so much?
Maybe not what, but who.
Who had Lucas brought into Todd’s life that would make him feel what his smile betrayed?
Cody flipped on his turn signal and exited the interstate. Another fifteen minutes and he is pulling into the Dubois driveway. But he does not see Jamie’s car. The overhead garage door is open and Cody can see Marion’s car is gone, too. Maintaining their vigilance the twin chairs, the ones he and Gus had occupied a few nights ago, are empty. Fresh grass clippings litter the sidewalk and driveway, but the lawn is only half completed, the mower standing in silent attention. Cody climbs out of the rental car and looks around. There is a feeling of interruption, as though everything had come to an abrupt halt.
Heart beating faster, Cody takes a deep breath, tries to remain calm. But it is no good, worry storms his mind and Cody breaks into trot, taking the front steps two at a time. He jerks the screen door open, looks at the front door, it is unlocked. Near panic, he shoves it open.
“Gu
s? Marion?” Cody calls out. “Jamie?”
The two-story house seems deserted. Standing on expensive ceramic tile in the foyer, Cody takes in the empty living room. Silence. No sounds from the kitchen, nothing upstairs. On his immediate right the pair of French doors that lead to the dining room are pulled shut. He reaches for the handle then stops, waits, listens.
Now Cody hears muffled sounds upstairs. Stepping lightly, Cody reaches for his gun as he walks to the foot of the stairs. His fingers find the clip-on belt holster. No gun. Shit. The goddamned thing is still on the car seat.
“Cody is that you?” Jamie calls down.
Cody exhales, trying to let his anxiety drain away, trying to hide it from his wife.
“Yeah, it’s me, honey.”
Wearing jeans under a mini, white bathrobe, Jamie appears in the hallway at the top of the stairs.
“I just got out of the shower,” she says, descending the stairs. “I was helping mom in the garden, but Todd called and she went to pick him up.”
“Todd? He’s okay?”
“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t he be?”
Cody looks away. “I’m worried about him. If your mom wasn’t picking him up, I’d be getting him myself. What about Gus, where’s he? And your car, where is it?”
Jamie puts her arms around Cody’s neck and kisses him. Body wash and shampoo and wet hair catch his senses. He kisses her back, inhaling, holding her tight.
“I miss you,” Jamie whispers, her lips just touching his. “Make love to me.”
