Niceville

by Carsten Stroud

  “So would I. Tig has a soft spot for Delia Cotton, so he wants to cover it personally.”

  “Lotta Missings going on around town, don’t ya think, Nick?”

  “I do. So does the mayor. Little Rock’s finally got his hair on fire—missing people can’t vote for him—and now he’s got Boonie Hackendorff all worked up. Anybody Boonie can spare is going back over the last ninety years, looking for a pattern.”

  “Ninety years?”

  “Yep. Every record. Something like one hundred and sixty-two people.”

  “Well, good luck to them,” said Mavis. “I been wondering when Little Rock would get wise to all our day-sah-para-cee-dos. Damn strange, you come to think, for a small city like Niceville.”

  She straightened up, called out to the young black man in the Armed Response uniform.

  “Dale, come on over and meet yourself a genuine war hero.”

  Nick winced but plastered on a smile as the Armed Response guy stepped up and offered his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Detective Kavanaugh. I’m Dale Jonquil.”

  He pronounced it “JON-kwill,” and said it with a straight face, although a lot of people who knew that a jonquil was a kind of daffodil liked to make smart-ass comments about it.

  Once, anyway.

  Nick, who wouldn’t have known a jonquil from a jackhammer, smiled, shook his hand, introduced Beau.

  “Dale is Special Forces too, Nick,” said Mavis.

  Nick looked at the man more closely. Jonquil looked back, a cool, quiet consideration.

  “Who you with?” asked Nick.

  “Twentieth Special Forces Group. Third Battalion.”

  “National Guard? Based in Florida?”

  “Yes sir. We liaised with Air Force SF at Hurlburt Field in Mary Esther but mainly we backed up the Seventh at Fort Bragg. Not much going on in our Area of Operations, which is mainly Mexico and Latin America.”

  “Except the narcotraficante wars along the border.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not allowed to get into that, at least not yet. So, no service like yours, if I can say so, sir. Everybody in Special Ops Command knows about you, sir. It’s a real privilege to meet you.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re home safe, Dale. Can you tell me what’s your read up there?”

  He nodded toward Temple Hill, and was surprised to find the young man’s expression closing up.

  “Sir, I honestly don’t know what to make of it. That nice old lady is plain gone. And so’s her gardener. Sergeant Crossfire and I walked through, it wasn’t like there was anything out of … out of place, like? But neither of us felt …”

  “Like staying,” said Mavis, her tone flat.

  Nick took that in.

  “Well, maybe Beau and I should go see for ourselves.”

  “You do that,” said Mavis.

  Nick put the car in gear, stopped and looked across the street at the crowd of neighbors.

  “Either of you talk to these people?”

  “Yes sir,” said Dale Jonquil. “I took down their names and phone numbers. Nobody saw anything out of the ordinary, other than they thought there might be a big party going on, because the lights were on all night and they could hear music coming from the house. But this is The Chase, sir, and people tend to value their privacy, so nobody made a call to us or went across to look.”

  “Thanks, Dale. Mavis. You going to wait?”

  Mavis shook her head.

  “We got a Barricaded EDP over at Saint Innocent. I gotta go supervise. Dale’s going to stay. This house was in his sector.”

  Nick was about to roll past that, but then he didn’t. An EDP was an Emotionally Disturbed Person, and a Barricaded EDP was the second most dangerous patrol call in the book.

  “Saint Innocent Orthodox? On Peachtree?”

  Mavis said it was, and was puzzled by the look on his face.

  “Got a name for the EDP?”

  “Hold on,” she said, unhooking her radio.

  “Delta Zero this is Echo Six Actual. Have we got a name for the EDP at Saint Innocent? Yeah? Okay, I’m five minutes away. Tell the guys to sit tight.”

  She snapped the rig back on her belt.

  “Some guy named Kevin Dennison. Supposed to be the custodian. He has the pastor and a couple of kids locked up in the rectory.”

  “Christ,” said Nick.

  “You know this guy?”

  Nick filled her in on the anonymous e-mail Tig had gotten that morning. Mavis took it in, her expression hardening up.

  “Jeez. You guys go all ape-shit on the man?”

  “No. Not on some anonymous tip. Tig wanted to go slow, didn’t want to burn the guy’s life down until we heard back from Maryland.”

  “Well somebody wanted to fuck with this guy. A reporter from the Register called the pastor, said they got a tip about a child molester supposed to be working there, and then the satellite trucks rolled up a couple minutes later. Dennison went totally bats. Locked himself in the office. You sure nobody at CID made a call?”

  “I don’t think so. But if somebody has, you can bet he’ll be out on his ass by the end of the day. In the meantime, go easy with this guy, if you can. He might be innocent.”

  “If I can. Innocent or not, he’s kicked over the trash can now. Something will have to be done.”

  “I understand. And you be careful, okay? We gotta do this thing here. Keep me in the loop about Dennison, if you can?”

  Mavis said she would.

  Nick turned to the Armed Response guy.

  “Dale, give us an hour at the house. Just stay down here, hold the AO and keep the gawkers at a good distance, if you don’t mind.”

  “Yes sir,” said Jonquil, coming on point.

  Nick was about to pull away when Mavis put her hand on his forearm.

  “Nick, while you’re up there, mind you mind the mirrors.”

  “Mind the mirrors?”

  A troubled expression moved across her open, friendly features while she worked at an answer.

  “Well, I—we—Dale and me both—we sort of … saw things, in the mirrors. Dale saw a pretty girl in a green sundress, holding a big old coon cat. I mean, he sees her reflection in a mirror, but when he looks around, there’s nothing behind him.”

  “You see anything, Mavis?”

  Mavis lost her easy manner.

  “Yeah. Doesn’t matter what I thought I saw. Some stupid thing out of my own damn brain. Nothing I care to get into here. Maybe over a beer. What I think, the house is full of cut glass, crystal, big shiny windows, mirrors and metal and polished things everywhere, like it’s the inside of a rose vase, sort of, or like maybe one of those collide-oh-scope thingys, so when you move around the house you think you’re seeing things out of the corner of your eye, but when you look, nothing is there. So, like I said, don’t let the mirrors spook you.”

  “That’s not quite what you said, Mavis.”

  She was silent for a moment, patted his forearm and straightened up.

  “No, I guess it isn’t. I’m at home tonight, after six. Call if you feel like talking.”

  “You think I will?”

  Mavis shrugged, gave him another forearm pat. Nick looked up at her for a moment, and then he eased the accelerator down and they rolled up the long curved drive towards the big house, parking the car in a turnout paved in red brick in front of a separate three-door garage. Nick put the cruiser in next to a large antique Packard in official Florida colors.

  Both men climbed out, feeling the light mist of rain that was sifting down through the shredding clouds, here and there a patch of clear blue showing. The front lawn smelled of grass cuttings and the gardens were lush and wet, a riot of magnolias and bougainvillea and Japanese maples.

  Beau tried the door on the Packard, popped the latch, and leaned into the interior, basically poking around inside to see what there was to see.

  Nick left him to it and walked across the drive towards the stairs that led up to the big curved
front porch, floored in strips of painted wood, set out here and there with graceful bentwood chairs.

  The door to the house was wide open, showing a lush Persian-patterned carpet that led away into the interior hall, a passage gleaming with polished wood and jeweled light from Art Nouveau shades and sconces along the wall.

  The main hall took a straight shot past what looked like a door into a huge bandbox on his right and another door opened onto a book-lined reading room on his left, running all the way to a large white-painted kitchen at the back of the house, a distance of maybe sixty feet.

  He stopped at the front door, listening to the house creak and groan and pop as the day’s heat warmed its old wooden bones.

  He looked up at the corner above the entry and saw a small camera fixed on a swivel, its red light a tiny ruby dot in the blue shadows under the porch roof. A surveillance camera, he realized, making a note to check for video.

  When he looked back down into the hallway there was a dark figure at the far end of the hall, silhouetted in the light from the kitchen. His breath stopped dead, a flood of glacier ice poured down his spine, and his heart began to thrum in his chest like a feathering prop.

  He blinked, but the image remained, a tall black figure, completely covered from head to foot in shapeless black robes, faceless and dead still.

  A Muslim woman, in a black burka.

  In a flash of white light his skin went numb and his revolver was in his hand before he had the thought—Beau, seeing the sudden flash of movement, came up the steps behind him, soft and quick, his own pistol out—Nick was aiming the Colt down the long dark hall at the still, black shape, his chest pounding and his throat aching and tight.

  Beau was at his side, his weapon also aimed down the long hall.

  “What is it?” he asked in a low whisper.

  “The woman in black, at the end of the hall,” said Nick, in a choked-off voice, more of a snarl, and as tight as a drumhead, “If she twitches, put two in her head. Not in the body. In her head.”

  Beau, trying to see what Nick had seen first, not sure what the hell was going on but seeing only a vague black shape shimmering there, followed as Nick moved quickly forward, his weapon up, his sights fixed on the head of the black figure sixty feet away. There is no way one can describe what was going on in his head right then as a normal police reaction.

  Beau, at a loss but game, covered him, following carefully as Nick moved down the ornate wood-paneled hall towards the black figure, Beau close behind, his pistol down and to the right, Beau checking each side room as they passed it by.

  About two-thirds of the way down the hall, the image of a tall thick-bodied Muslim woman in a full black burka abruptly resolved itself into a partially open glass door, and, reflected in the glass, a black pillar carved in hieroglyphics, in a niche by the kitchen entrance.

  Nick halted in mid-stride, causing Beau to almost step on his heels, and there he stood, locked in place, his left leg vibrating wildly. He swallowed, with difficulty, lowered his gun, turned away and put his back up against the wall, breathing in short sharp gasps, both legs now trembling violently, his skin gray and wet.

  “Nick, what’s the matter. Nick. You okay?”

  Nick held up his hand, palm out, working to get himself under control, making a vague gesture for Beau to go on ahead and check out the kitchen.

  Beau stood there for a long moment, wondering if Nick was having a heart attack, and then he moved off down the hall and walked out into the bright open area of an all-white kitchen.

  Nick stayed in the relative gloom of the hallway, staring into nothing as he tried to get his head out of Al Kuribayeh and the Wadi Doan, seeing again the spiky stone village at the bottom of a jagged valley surrounded by sandstone walls a thousand feet high.

  He heard the wind in the creosote shrubs and the thudding chatter of automatic weapons echoing around the valley. He closed his eyes and put his head back against the wall.

  The floorboards creaked near him and he opened his eyes to find Beau there, looking at him with a worried expression.

  “Nick, what’d you see? What was there?”

  Nick wasn’t going to try to explain the Wadi Doan to Beau, or to anyone else.

  “I’m sorry I freaked you. I thought I saw … a woman … at the end of the hall. I thought she might have a gun in her hand. What did you see?”

  Beau shook his head, blinking at Nick.

  “Man … I don’t know. I saw this black pillar thing here, looked sorta ripply in the glass. But nothing like a woman.”

  With an effort, Nick got himself back inside his own skin, pushed himself off the wall.

  “Forget about it. Mavis has a great imagination. Remind me to tell her so later. Let’s just go through the house, slow and careful, okay?”

  Beau, relieved to see Nick back to normal, nodded, gave him a happy gundog look.

  “Okay. Where you want to start?”

  “There’s a security camera out front. See if you can find a hard drive for it. Maybe there’s an image on it we can use.”

  “Okay,” said Beau, moving back up the hall towards the door. Nick shook himself one last time, took in a long, uneven breath, let it out slow, and walked towards the bandbox room.

  Pausing in the door, he saw a large octagonal room, pale yellow walls with white crown molding, lined with tall graceful windows, a large stained-glass lamp in the ceiling. The wooden floors gleamed with polish and the windows shimmered with a rain-washed light streaming in through the antique glass.

  A pair of stuffed chairs were set down in front of a large fifties-era stereo and a General Electric television set in a huge blond-wood cabinet. A side table next to one of the chairs held a black remote and a heavy crystal glass that was half full of an amber liquid.

  Nick bent down, sniffed the glass—scotch, flat and warm, been there all night. A comforter lay on the floor in front of the chair, as if it had slipped off Delia’s lap when she got up.

  Assuming it was Delia in the chair.

  He used a pen tip to touch the remote for the stereo and the room was suddenly booming with the sound of a mournful cello, the volume set at a deafening level. The grocery lady, Alice Bayer, had said that she shut it off when she got into the house. Nick shut it off again, used the pen to flick the television set on.

  The screen bloomed slowly into light and he was looking at the front porch, a color image, obviously taken from the POV of the security camera. He could see Beau kneeling down in the lower left corner of the picture, probably tracing a cable.

  Okay.

  She’s sitting here, having a scotch, listening to some cello music. A nice quiet Friday evening. Something disturbs her. Not the phone. Was there a bell down by the gate? He’d have to look. He didn’t think so. Maybe the doorbell. Yes, because before she got up to answer the door, she switched the television to the closed-circuit channel to see who it was at the door.

  So whoever was at the door was somebody she wasn’t worried about, somebody she knew, a friend maybe? The gardener? Gray Haggard?

  Was she expecting him?

  If so, why check the security camera?

  Maybe she was just a paranoid old bat?

  Beau and he would have to go through all her things, her files, her bank accounts, everything. Missing Persons already had her description out with all the local and County guys.

  If she had just wandered off—maybe a stroke—they’d find her. But it wasn’t likely that they had both wandered off, unless she was gone when Haggard got here and now he was off somewhere looking for her. Or they had gone off together?

  Without his car?

  Or hers?

  Did she have a car?

  Yes.

  A 1975 navy blue Cadillac Fleetwood, a huge barge of a boat that would have stood out if anybody had seen it on the roads. But, according to the file, the car was in the shop for repairs, which was why Alice Bayer was dropping by with groceries.

  No. They weren’t off on a
road trip. There was more to this than a couple of doddering old geezers stumbling off into the night.

  So far the house wasn’t telling him much, other than that she owned a lot of very expensive stuff—all of which was still lying around everywhere, so robbery didn’t look like a motive. It was clear from the opulence of the house and all that it contained that Delia lived right at the top of the Niceville food chain. But then, she was a Cotton, wasn’t she, and that’s what they had always been, lords of all they surveyed for over a hundred years.

  He stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly around, trying to get some feeling about what might have happened here, and he noticed a set of tall glass double doors, leading, it looked like, into a wood-paneled dining room.

  The doors were shut and the ancient glass, as rippled as running water, conveyed only a rough impression of what was beyond them—dark wood and brass and bright shining things and a large chandelier over the table, glittering like a Fourth of July sparkler.

  He walked over and stood in front of the doors, looking through the glass, and was about to reach for the gilt handle to open them when he felt something grating under his foot.

  He looked down and saw a small lump of what at first looked like red coal, jagged and misshapen, about the size of a thimble. He picked it up and turned it in his hand. It was blood-warm, almost hot, and it wasn’t coal.

  He knelt down and ran his hand over the floorboards, which were also blood-warm, for some odd reason. Maybe a hot-water pipe ran under the doorway here?

  He felt another tiny lump under his searching palm, and picked that up as well, a star-shaped fragment with rough, twisted edges, as if it had at one point been ripped from something much larger, and by a powerful explosive force. To his military mind these lumps looked exactly like shrapnel.

  He stood up, pocketing the metal fragments, and looked more carefully around in the doorway. The varnish on the flooring near here was marked, discolored, almost as if it had been scraped or burned away. Whatever it was, the discoloration ran under the closed doors.

  He opened both doors wide.

  The dining room was neat, spacious, and elegant, the tall lyre-backed chairs lined up in close-order drill, the huge expanse of inlaid wood shining like topaz, reflecting the brilliance of the crystal chandelier above it.