A Garden of Vipers

by Jack Kerley

  Pettigrew pursed his lips, thought. “Got a photo?”

  “I can fax you one.”

  “Do that, may spark something.”

  We stood, shook hands, thanked Pettigrew for his time.

  “That case sits hard in my craw,” he said. “It was tough to leave in the middle.”

  Harry said, “Arn mentioned you got hired by the Montgomery force. Recruited.”

  “They needed patrol personnel, had a grant for adding cops, got my name somewhere. Hired me the day of my interview. Got the gold two years later.”

  “They came looking for you?” Harry said. “Big compliment. I’m impressed.”

  Pettigrew reddened; for a split second I saw a shy country boy.

  “Aw hell, they were just beating the bushes for small-town cops looking for the big-city experience, guys that wouldn’t need a lot of training.” He shrugged. “I hated leaving cases hanging, but the Montgomery department needed me fast. It was basically jump right then or spend my days dealing with Cade Barlow. I jumped.”

  CHAPTER 27

  We were fifteen minutes above Mobile on I-65. I was lying in the back, trying to make sense of the last two weeks. I felt someone had set a basketball-size tangle of thread before me and said, “Untangle it, but don’t use your hands.”

  The phone rang in my jacket. I spoke, hung up, looked at the back of Harry’s head.

  “It’s your favorite lawyer. Walls wants to talk.”

  Harry wrinkled his nose. “The scumbucket say what he wants in return? He always wants something.”

  Walls met us at the door, pointed us to his office. Harry pulled his bandana handkerchief and dusted off the chair before he sat. Walls pretended not to notice.

  “Something came to me,” Walls said, sitting behind his desk and pinching lint from his shiny silk suit. “The picture of the blond guy. See, I was in my office late last night, working on a client’s case, guy named Tony Binker, Tony the Bee…”

  “Oh shit,” Harry moaned.

  “Tony’s not a bad guy, just a kid who got trapped in the wrong crowd…”

  Harry said, “Tony the Bee runs a drug gang, Walls. He makes wrong crowds.”

  “When it occurred you guys were the investigating officers on Tony’s little event. While I was trying to place the guy in the picture, it also occurred to me that you guys could make a positive recommendation to the Prosecutor’s Office about Tony. Lighten things up if he goes down.”

  Harry smoldered. Walls licked his forefinger, scratched something from the lapel of his suit. He rolled whatever it was into a ball and flicked it away.

  “In many ways I’m like a social worker, y’know? Giving my life to disadvantaged human beings who take a wrong road. Folk needing a modicum of rehabilitation, probably not half as much as the state deems necessary…”

  I shot a look at Harry. Disgust blanketed his face. Still, he nodded his head, Do it.

  I said, “All right, Walls. We’ll do what we can with the prosecution side. No promises.”

  “Harry?” Walls said. “Is that your thinking?”

  Harry’s lips twitched with the words he wanted to say, finally coming out as, “Yeah, Walls. I’ll back it up. See if they can shave a bit. It’s the least I can do for such a fine social worker.”

  Walls beamed. “You boys are aces.” He reached out to shake hands on the agreement.

  “Your turn,” I said, ignoring his hand and holding up the photo. Walls blocked it with his fingers, like he didn’t want it in his field of vision.

  “First off, Harry, Carson, you never heard any of this from me.”

  Harry grunted. “We don’t take ads out in the Register saying where we get our information.”

  “I’m in deep water here, guys. I don’t need to look up and see a shark coming my way.”

  “This guy’s a shark?”

  Walls went to his door, looked into the lobby like he was expecting an eavesdropper under the carpet. He closed the door, snapped the lock, sat back down.

  “He’s a king-hell shark. A shark for sharks. Name he usually goes by is Crandell. He’s a fix-it man, problem-solver. But this shark doesn’t swim at the bottom of the barrel. He swims way up high. Unions, though maybe not lately. Oil companies. Brokerage houses. Big shiny places like Enron.”

  Harry was dubious. “He kills for them?”

  “If it came to that, sure, he’d probably love it, be happy for the chance. But at Crandell’s level, killing is a last resort. Too messy, and someone in the hierarchy has to point a finger and say go. I imagine Mr. Crandell spends most of his time returning lost items to where they belong. Missing art. Misappropriated stocks. Wayward spouses.”

  “How do I know you’re not making this up?” Harry said. “A crock to knock a couple years off your boy’s drop.”

  “I started in a big practice—Barton, Turnbull and Pryce. This was a dozen years back. White-shoe firm, guys who talcumed their fingers to make the tips of their nails whiter. We had a big-ass corporate client. The wife of one of the directors ran off. Wifey was telling tales on the guy, that he was a wacko, sick. It didn’t reflect well on the corporation. Plus the lady’d appropriated a fat pile of bearer bonds to finance her new life.”

  I said, “I can see where that might be embarrassing.”

  “Legal action was a spotlight no one wanted. Someone in the firm had heard of Crandell, called him. Crandell looked like a successful businessman, a guy who’d started on the loading dock, now ran the firm. Bright smile, intelligent vocabulary, boardroom clothes. See, dealing with a guy like that, your standard white-collar types need to feel they’re passing the job over to another businessperson, like, ‘Here’s a problem in marketing, deal with it.’”

  “Just don’t tell us how.”

  “It’s business: Results are everything. Anyway, I met Crandell, not knowing what he was or did. Most people couldn’t tell, but I could.”

  “How?” Harry asked.

  “His eyes. If he looked at you steady, you couldn’t see anything off. But now and then I could see rabies sloshing around, like it was pooling behind his pupils. Does that make any sense?”

  Yeah, I thought, if you’ve ever spent much time around psychos and socios. Many appeared as innocent as Salvation Army bell-ringers. But turn your back and they’d bite your spine in half.

  “What happened?” I asked. “To the problem.”

  “It all went away. Wifey stopped telling tales, the stack of bonds wandered home, a bit lighter. Happened fast, too. That’s all I know.”

  Harry stared at Walls.

  “So what’s your bottom line on having Crandell in our midst?”

  The lawyer tightened his tie, smoothed down the front of his jacket. I saw the talcum beneath his nails.

  “Someone around here’s got a problem, Harry. A big one.”

  We got back to our desks at five. We drew straws—broken pencils, actually. Harry lost and had to run to the prosecutor’s office to see what he could do about Walls’s request.

  I grabbed a cup of coffee that tasted like fried paste, sat at my desk, and tried to encapsulate the day into computerized notes, e-paperwork: who, what, where. It was a creative exercise to write case notes making us seem smarter and more in charge than two guys jerked back and forth across Mobile County by indecipherable events spanning four years.

  A half hour later I dropped my head to my hands and massaged my temples. I didn’t want to head home, didn’t want to stay at my desk.

  “Beer,” said something in my head, and I was forced to obey.

  I pushed through the door of Flanagan’s, took the window table beneath the neon sign that hummed. Harry and I always joked that it didn’t know the words. The place was almost empty, heavy traffic not due for another couple hours. The juke was silent, praise be. Though there was one song on the box that blew me away, a haunting old piece called “Wayward Wind” by Gogi Grant. Me and a retired sergeant from Records were the only ones who ever played it; he’d get te
ars in his eyes. I’d get melancholy, too, but the sweet kind. I have no idea why. I’d drop a quarter, play the song, and Harry’d look at me like I was crazy.

  I scanned the bar, a few desultory drinkers, one staring at me, a slender, broad-shouldered black guy, young, thoughtful eyes in a café au lait face.

  Tyree Shuttles.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he ambled over. Shuttles had been a detective for four or five months and still looked uncomfortable in plainclothes, absentmindedly tapping the service belt he no longer wore, the street cop’s life-support system: weapon, baton, cuffs, ammunition, radio, pepper spray—twenty pounds of tools for every occasion. I’d worn what some guys called the “Bat Belt,” after Batman, for three years. Sometimes in the morning when dressing, my head thick with sleep, I still reached for the damn thing.

  Shuttles pulled up a chair and we small-talked cases and street monsters and the revolving-door system, standard cop time-passers. Shuttles was kind of a tech head, telling me about new gadgets and gizmos in law enforcement.

  After a few minutes I asked how things were going with the Carole Ann Hibney case, figuring I’d pass the news on to Harry.

  Shuttles looked away. “It’s OK. Not much breaking, but we’ve got some leads.”

  “Leads like?”

  “Cell phone records for one. Regular johns. We’re going through them.”

  “We’re going through them, like you and Logan?”

  “Well, mainly me,” Shuttles admitted. “The tough part’s the interrogations, like you’d expect.”

  “Been there. You show up at a house and the john opens the door, with wife, three kids, and the family dog right behind him.”

  Shuttles started laughing.

  “What is it, Tyree?”

  “I got a guy aside from his girlfriend, asked where he was on the night in question. He said—and I swear I’m not making this up—‘I think I was tied up that night, Detective.’”

  I started laughing, and we traded a few other funny cop stories. I had five more years in the department, so I had more stories, plus the time to develop them, get the timing right.

  Twice when a lull arose in the patter, Shuttles started to say something, seemed to think better of it, looked out the window. He finished his beer, said it was laundry night and he had to go shovel quarters into machines. He tried to argue me out of the tab, lost. We knocked knuckles and he drifted out the door.

  I looked at his back as he left, wondering what he was trying to say.

  My cell rang as I stood to leave a few minutes later, thinking I’d follow Shuttles’s lead, go home and do mindless tasks until I fell asleep. I checked the number on the incoming call.

  It was Clair, her cell, not the morgue. I answered.

  “Hi, Clair. I was going to call you in the morning. Your lead on the victim from four years back looks tied to today.”

  “I hope it helps. You at home? Work?”

  “Flanagan’s, about to head home.”

  “I’m finishing up at the morgue,” she said. “Got a few minutes?”

  “Want me to call Harry, see if he’s available?”

  “Just you, please.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  I rang the after-hours bell, was let in by a security guard. It was quiet as, well, death, a lone janitor running a mop at the far end of the hall. Clair was at her desk catching up on paperwork. She gestured for me to sit, dropped her lanyarded reading glasses. She brushed aside a lock of black hair and sipped from a cup of hot tea, Earl Grey, judging by the scent of bergamot. Her eyes stared at me through wisps of steam. For a microsecond I felt whatever slender bond held us, a rustling of molecules in the air.

  “I’ve been worried about something, Carson. Debating with myself whether or not to…It’s never been my inclination to poke into people’s private lives.”

  She picked up a paperweight, a dandelion trapped in a glassy half-round, moving it from one side of her desk to the other with nervous hands, a rarity for Clair. She cleared her throat, took a sip of tea.

  “A few days back, after the Channel 14 soiree, you asked about a certain family.”

  I suddenly felt an odd dread. “The Kincannons.”

  “Yesterday you mentioned you’d split with your girlfriend, making reference to her taking up with another man, handsome and wealthy.”

  “The guy’s got everything,” I said. “And a spare everything in the trunk.”

  “Is it one of the Kincannon brothers, Carson?”

  “Buck,” I admitted.

  “Close the door, please.”

  I complied, returned to my seat.

  “Do you know much about them?” she asked. “The Kincannons?”

  “Until I spoke to you all I knew was the name. I’ve seen it on some plaques down at the Police Academy. But something came to light: Harry worked with Buck Kincannon and the K-clan foundation a few years back, building a little ball field for underprivileged kids. Then the Kincannons wanted favors in return. Big ones. They thought they could buy people’s integrity. They were dead wrong in this instance. But the kids lost their field, teams, everything.”

  “Not unprecedented,” Clair said. “Unfortunately.”

  “You’d know because the Kincannons were part of your old blue-blood crowd, right? The two hundred or four hundred or whatever constitutes the social register?”

  Clair tented her long white fingers, poised her chin at the apex.

  “Lesson time, Ryder. There’s a social order in Mobile, of course. Old money at the core, old names. If it weren’t for many of those folks, the symphony, museums, all manner of cultural events would suffer. Many are honorable people, generous with time and money, others are insufferable prigs.”

  “The latter being the Kincannons?”

  “They’re not part of this group, sassiety types, as Harry calls them. Behind their façade, the Kincannons are coarse and crude. Pariahs. True society types go out of their way to avoid them.”

  “I saw all manner of folks squirming after the Kincannons at the party, Clair. I didn’t see much avoidance.”

  “You saw politicians and sycophants, Carson. Old-line Mobile families wouldn’t invite the Kincannons to a weenie roast, not that they have them. That may even be a part of the problem.”

  “Not having weenie roasts?”

  “The Kincannons are shunned. In a coldly civil way, but ostracized nonetheless. It’s made them insular, self-absorbed. They pass out money hoping it buys respect and acceptance, but they’re so heavy-handed and self-serving it only makes the insiders loathe them more. The public, of course, sees none of this.”

  “Negative publicity isn’t big with these folks.”

  “The family employs the biggest PR agency in the state, the toniest law firm in town, the caterer du jour does all their events, a photographer documents their every turn…”

  I held up my hand. “I don’t care for the clan. But I have a hard time picturing them being as malicious as you’re implying.”

  “The Kincannons have been playing at being benevolent and likeable for so long that they may even believe that story themselves. They abide by social and legal compacts for the most part. Until something threatens their world. Then you see the dark side of their souls, the broken side.”

  “You’re saying they can be dangerous?”

  “When threatened. Or denied something they want.”

  “Clair, they’re just rich, selfish shits. Maybe you’re making too much of their power to—”

  “Shhhh. Listen to me. This girlfriend. Do you still care for her?”

  “I’m having a hard time telling her, but…I think so.”

  A strange moment of sadness or resignation crossed Clair’s face. “Warn her away from Buck Kincannon, Carson. From all the Kincannons.”

  I sighed. “I’ll do what I can, Clair.”

  She studied me for a few seconds, then turned away. I pushed to my feet and walked toward the door. At the threshold, I turned,
remembering the other day, wanting to thank Clair for holding me in my moment of desolation.

  Her back was turned to me. She was looking out the window. I saw the reflection of her face against the night, like a white moon in a sky as lonely as a Hank Williams song. I started to speak but my heart jumped in the way.

  CHAPTER 28

  The next day was a day off rotation. I’d arisen at eight, late for me, and spent an hour in the kayak, cutting hard through a low surf. I’d followed the kayaking with a three-mile beach run. I had to force myself to sit at the dining room table and do a brief stint with Rudolnick’s papers. I’d put in a boring fifteen minutes when Harry called.

  “I’m thinking about running over to the Mississippi line, Carson, that little bass lake over there. You in?”

  I’d given a lot of thought to Clair’s warnings. I wasn’t convinced Dani was in true personal danger unless rising so high and fast in the Clarity chain gave her a nosebleed. Still, Clair was not given to cry-wolfing, and I figured I could combine some lax time with some learn time.

  “Thanks anyway, bro. I’m thinking about just getting out and driving. Maybe in the country. Roll down the windows and let the air blow my head clear, at least for a while.”

  I heard suspicion in Harry’s voice. “Where in the country? Not up by where Ms. Holtkamp was killed?”

  “That was northeast,” I corrected. “I’m thinking more to the northwest side. Farm country.”

  “You being straight?”

  “What? You don’t trust me to simply take a drive?”

  Harry grunted and hung up.

  Farmland lay as far as the eye could see, melons and cotton and groves of pecan trees. I passed piney woods, trees rising straight as arrows pointed at the heart of the sky. The green smell of pine perfused the heated air.

  Then the landscape changed, the woods at my shoulder becoming meadow wrapped with whitewashed plank fences, the land studded with water oak and sycamore, here and there a slash pine looming like a spire. The land seemed cool with shade.