A Garden of Vipers

by Jack Kerley

  I had once passed through central Kentucky, the horse farms east of Paris and Cynthiana, where fences stretched to the horizon and thoroughbreds grazed in the lime-rich bluegrass. Only here, in north Mobile County, the champions were cattle, Brahmas, with minotaur-heavy shoulders and gray hides as sleek as seal pelts.

  Kincannon raised prize Brahmas. I figured I was close.

  I passed the hub of the husbandry operation, a half-dozen barnlike outbuildings, open doors revealing tractors and livestock trailers. There was a vehicle carrier with a small Bobcat-type ’dozer on its bed. I saw a feed silo, pens, food and water stations.

  I drove on, crossing a rise. Below was a stone arch like a segment of Roman aqueduct, a massive iron K affixed to the keystone. A guardhouse stood behind one of the pillars, almost hidden. The main house was a good quarter mile from the road, white brick, massive, plantation-style. White fence bordered the lane to the house. In the center of the sprawling lawn was a larger-than-life sculpture of a Brahma bull, golden in color, an outsized Kincannon K branded on its flank. The bull held a forehoof aloft and glared toward the road like a challenge. The sculpture seemed an amazing exercise in hubris and I shook my head.

  I looked again and noticed a second house on the property, as large as the closer house, tucked back in the trees a quarter mile distant.

  I blew past the entrance, continued for several hundred feet, turned on a dirt road to the right. It appeared to be the western border of the property, white-fenced to the right, thick woods to the left. I lumbered to the side of the road and stared into the woods. The main structures would be on the far side of the trees, perhaps a quarter mile distant.

  I pulled field glasses from the glove box. Ten seconds later I was over the white fence and moving into the woods. I wasn’t sure of my motives, only that I had to see more, as if I could find a sign or symbol on the vast property explaining who these beings were. And why, having so much, they demanded still more. I pulled the glasses to my eyes and saw a snippet of the white house through the trees. I continued walking, then froze at a voice ahead, high and giggly.

  “You can’t find me.”

  I slipped behind a slender oak, put the binoculars to my face, tried to isolate the direction of the voice.

  “You’re getting warmer,” the voice said.

  A sound pulled my glasses to a large and chubby child crashing through the growth. He was perhaps two hundred feet away. I heard a small engine kick in.

  Then an adult voice, male. “Where’s Freddy at?”

  “You can’t find him! You’re getting colder now.”

  A game of hide-and-seek. The engine sputtered, moved nearer. “Where has Freddy gone?” said the adult voice, verging on anger, tired of the game.

  A childish giggle. “Over here!”

  The engine came closer. I dropped to the ground, wriggled beneath branches, flipped leaves over me as impromptu camouflage. The engine was loud and unmuffled and close enough for me to smell the exhaust.

  The machine stopped two dozen feet away. I saw a tall and lean man on a four-wheel ATV. He wore a nondescript brown uniform, like that of a security guard. A semiautomatic pistol was holstered at his side. If he looked my direction, there was no way he’d miss me.

  “You’re real cold,” the child’s voice giggled in the distance.

  “Fucking moron,” the guy muttered. He cleared his throat, spat, put on a playful voice. “I’m coming to get you, Freddy.”

  “You’ll never find me.”

  The guy cranked the throttle and tore away. I let my breath out, stood on shaky knees, and began my retreat. I was halfway to the road when I heard a burst of laughter and returned the glasses to my face. Through the leaves I saw the man on the ATV, the chubby child at his back, holding tight with stubby arms, laughing. They were moving slow, puttering along.

  I focused the glasses tighter, saw a beard line on the child. Not a child, an adult. His face was small and round, his mouth wide with delight. I turned to the road and my foot caught a fallen limb. I crashed hard to the ground, a dry branch cracking like the report of a .22.

  The ATV engine revved hard, clanked into gear, started my way. I ran the last leg, clambered over the fence, jumped into the car. I fishtailed away, looking in the rearview. No one at the fence line. But anyone caring to look would note the scrabbled-up leaves where I’d built my impromptu hidey-hole.

  Three miles down the road from my escapade I pulled into a small grocery store, thirsty. The clerk was a heavyset black woman in her forties, hair bleached yellow. Her name tag said SYLVIA.

  “You’re pretty close to the Kincannons’ place here,” I said, snapping a package of beef jerky from the rack.

  “Yep,” she said. She shot me a wary glance. “You know them?”

  “Heard of them’s all. Hear they’re big with charities, that kind of thing.”

  “I guess.”

  “They ever stop in here?”

  “Some a the workers do. I saw a Kincannon onct, the one called Racey.”

  “Racine?”

  She nodded. “He come in wit’ a bunch a his buddies. I think they’d been shootin’ birds or somethin’ by how they was talkin’. They’d been drinkin’, I smelt it soon’s the door came open. One says to the other, ‘I don’t care. If my bag’s empty after an hour, I gotta ground-shoot something.’ Then they all took to laughin’ and slappin’ backs.”

  “What’d they come in for?”

  “Pick up a couple six packs, get rid of a couple others.” She nodded at doors toward the back, RESTROOMS hand-painted above.

  “Good to know rich people use the john like the rest of us,” I said, walking to the counter with my purchases.

  “Mebbe not like the rest of us,” Sylvia said.

  “How’s that, ma’am?”

  “They pissed ever’where but in the commode. Floor, walls, in the sink, acrost the stack of paper towels. Cleared out they noses on the mirror, too.”

  “Maybe really rich people think that’s funny,” I said. “Ones like Racine Kincannon.”

  Sylvia handed back my change. Her eyes were tired. “Devil puts his money where he gets the most back.”

  When I got outside, a blue truck was sitting next to my truck, a dual-track monster idling like a diesel-powered dragster. A K in a circle was painted on the door, the same K I’d seen over the stone entranceway and on the sculpted bull’s flank. The man at the wheel was on the far side, a big guy in a uniform. The guy in the passenger seat was the raw, bone-hard guy from the ATV.

  I walked between the vehicles to get to my door. The rawboned guy stared at me with small hard eyes. The patch on a muscled shoulder said PRIVATE SECURITY. I nodded, just a guy loading up on snacks. The guy kept up the cold-eyed glare. He reminded me of a coiled rattlesnake.

  He said, “I just see you on that single-lane dirt road a couple miles yonder?”

  “Must have been someone else,” I said. “Why?”

  “That’s my bidness. Not yours.”

  I tapped his door panel with my knuckle, said, “What’s the K stand for?”

  “Keep your fuckin’ hands off the truck.”

  “Have a nice day,” I responded, climbing behind the wheel.

  My next stop in the Kincannon pilgrimage was an office park, a multiacred expanse of rolling, neatly tended grass with square brick office buildings every eighth of a mile or so. The buildings were auburn; from a 747 the campus would resemble red dice on green baize.

  Every tributary from the central road held a brass sign pointing out address ranges and directions. I wound past two large ponds complete with high-spraying fountains in the center and white ducks on the shoreline, pulled beside a red box with coppery windows. A sign beside the entrance said KEI, KINCANNON ENTERPRISES, INTERNATIONAL.

  There was a parking lot, but it was closer to park on the street, walk to the building. I pushed through a tinted glass door into a cool lobby smelling of plastic and rug shampoo. A building receptionist sat behind a U
-shaped desk. A beefy security guard stood in the corner. He looked me over hard, hair to shoes, like he was expecting someone but wasn’t quite sure who.

  “I’m looking for the building directory,” I said to the receptionist, a young woman who thought it would be ultrasophisticated to combine a British and southern accent.

  “May I awsk what firm y’all looking for?”

  “Just a building directory.”

  The security meat moved over quick. “Help you with something, sport?”

  He didn’t expect to be shown a gold badge by a guy in raggedy cutoffs and a shirt from a Key West fish joint.

  “Directory?” I repeated.

  “Why you need to know?”

  “Am I hearing the beginnings of an obstruction charge here?” I said.

  “The top floor is the KEI executive offices. The third floor is KEI administrative offices. Clarity Broadcasting is the second floor. The first is Magnolia Industrial Developments.” He said it like it hurt to move his mouth.

  “There. Wasn’t brain surgery, was it?” I said, heading out the door.

  Lucas finished the last of the moo shu pork, tossed the carton in the trash bag. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, then stood and bent to the floor, relaxing his spine. He opened the window blinds an inch and peered at the building across the way, corner office, top floor, Buck Kincannon’s office. Racine Kincannon’s office was to the right of the corner, Nelson Kincannon’s to the left.

  A week ago his world was a bed and a room. Now he had his very own insecurities firm. Lucas leaned against the wall and struck a pose that had always amused him, arms crossed, head canted, mouth stern with decision-making. He started laughing, and the laughter brought a memory.

  “Why are you laughing, Lucas?”

  “Because it’s all so funny, Dr. Rudolnick.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “How much I scare them. How much it scares them.”

  “What do you mean by it, Lucas?”

  “Shall I do some calculations? Would you like a brief analysis of pork bellies?”

  Lucas stepped from the wall, looked outside, saw nothing interesting. It was night when things got exciting, when the other people came and went, sometimes in a frenzy. Watching them was glorious to behold, jackets off, sleeves rolled, ties pulled loose. They spread maps on the conference room table. Vehicles came and went in the lot below. Sometimes a cop car floated past, stopped briefly.

  The faces of the participants were always dark with worry. Even Crandell’s. Everyone was playing a role in response to the roles played by the others. But behind the roles…I, Me, Mine.

  The night before, the whole crew had been in the conference room—the war room, in Lucas’s self-amusing terminology. He had used his new microwave to make popcorn, then sat in the dark and watched events like a movie. It became quite dramatic near midnight, a fistfight breaking out between Nelson and Racine, the others pulling them apart.

  The blame game with no one to name. Or everyone.

  He’d also seen something of consummate interest, the sort of thing his mentor had suggested would be occurring. In his current role of primary family mouthpiece, Buck Kincannon was often absent from the firm. No one could enter his office but his personal assistant, middle-aged, a prim and efficient woman, pear-shaped with a plain face and heavy ankles. The very same pair of ankles he’d seen above Nelson Kincannon’s ass two afternoons running, the couch sessions lasting six minutes. Lucas wondered what fantasies Nelson conjured to keep his equipment engaged. It would take some major sleight of mind.

  It was thus no surprise that whenever Buck left the building his assistant scampered into Nelson’s office with a file in her hands. Buck’s phone calls and message slips, he supposed! Nelson shuffled through, made a note or two, the assistant returning the file to BK’s office. Buck would keep personal e-mails private and password protected. But calls to Buck would be slipped to Nelson via his plain-faced loverette providing an indicator of Buck’s activities and intentions. The woman’s duplicity thrilled Lucas.

  He crept to the window and looked out into the bright sunlight. On the road below was a gray truck that looked like it had just driven in from Guadalajara. A white guy in scruffy clothes was pulling it away. A janitor type, maybe. Not interesting. But it was a beautiful day. Maybe he’d go sit in the back lot, out of sight, just for a few minutes of sun.

  “Do you think they’d let me outside today, Doctor?”

  “You disappointed them the last time, Lucas.”

  “We learn from our mistakes, Doctor. I’ll just go sit by the window and watch Freddy play in the woods. I like to hear him laugh.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “I got the photo you sent, Detective Ryder. Pretty fuzzed-up by the time it came across our fax. The fax machine’s ancient, coal-powered, I think.”

  The next morning I started by calling Pettigrew to see if the augmented photo of the man called Crandell had struck a chord. I didn’t expect it to, but everything had to be tried. I used the conference room phone, Harry listening from across the table. I hadn’t told Harry about my trip to the two Kincannon sites. He wouldn’t have been pleased.

  I said, “The pic was fuzzy to begin with, Ben. It spark anything?”

  “Four years have passed. Sorry.”

  Dead end.

  I said, “Thanks for trying, Ben. For Barlow to know Crandell was a long shot. Your knowing anything would be longer.”

  “Crandell? You never mentioned the name,” he said.

  “The name mean something?”

  I heard Pettigrew shift in his chair and pictured him leaning forward, elbows on the desk, phone tight to his ear.

  “Not long before I left for Montgomery, Barlow crept around to the side of the headquarters, nothing there but weeds. He was talking. I wouldn’t have heard him with the windows tight, but I don’t like too much AC, so I keep my window open a few inches.”

  “Barlow met someone out there?”

  “He was on his cell. I figured the call was one of his girlfriends, a scary bunch. Then I got caught by how polite he was being, deferential, saying yessir and nossir. That’s not Cade Barlow.”

  “He was talking to Crandell?”

  “I remember him saying Mr. Randall, but…”

  “Awfully damn close,” I said.

  “Barlow came back into the building grinnin’ like a shitbird. That was strange, too. Even before Barlow turned nasty he didn’t smile much. I think he’s sensitive about them corn-colored chompers.”

  Harry leaned in. “After that time…Barlow ever come up with any interesting property or money?”

  “How’d you know? Just before I moved he started riding a big ol’ vintage Harley Panhead. Fifties-era, heavy custom work. I figured thirty grand minimum.”

  “This has been a real good talk, Ben,” Harry said.

  We hung up. Harry pushed the phone device out of the way.

  “Barlow ain’t just nasty, Cars, he’s dirty. I smelled it on him. This clinches the deal: Rudolnick, Taneesha, Fur Face or Funky or whoever, Frederika Holtkamp, the pressed-down grass beneath that microwave tower, Barlow. It’s all the same case—find out something about one, we find out something about the other.”

  It was a daunting array of investigative possibilities. “What do we do next?” I asked.

  “Taneesha, Ms. Holtkamp, and Bernie Rudolnick are dead. Barlow’s alive. Let’s drop the photo of Crandell in front of him. Out of thin air. See how he reacts.”

  I ran the scenario in my head. “Barlow’s a cop, Harry. Good at the stone face. He might not give anything away if we just drop a picture in his lap.”

  “You got something better?”

  “How about we come at Barlow with an angle, something that confuses him just enough to mess with his response mechanism?”

  A half hour later I was bending over a paper cutter, Harry handing me copy paper a dozen sheets at a time. For the first time in two weeks, the air felt refreshing to breathe, like it
had gotten a jolt of new oxygen.

  “How much, you think?” I asked, tapping the stack of paper rectangles.

  Harry lifted the stack, riffled it like money.

  “Gimme another half inch, Cars. I want Barlow’s fingers to touch it and get horny.”

  We finished, headed to Forensics, and found Thaddeus Claypool in the ballistics section, banging on computer keys and muttering about apogees and parabolic decay and whatnot. He wore an aloha shirt with blue macaws on a field of green. His jeans looked field-tested at Woodstock. When Claypool saw us he jumped up and created an ad hoc group hug. It took a few seconds to disentangle.

  “Remember that tape you cleaned up for us, Thad?”

  “Sure. I played with the program a bit after that, squeezed a couple bugs out. I talked to a game developer buddy of mine, got input on spatial modeling. What you do is map a grid of floating points on the—”

  “Want to try a project?”

  “Whatcha need?” His earnest eyes sparkled behind scarlet reading glasses.

  “You still got the tape of the suited guy?”

  “Sure.”

  “But he’s looking to the side, right?”

  “I’ve got two frames where he almost moves to three quarters.”

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out a photograph taken last fall at Bellingrath Gardens. Harry and I are standing in front of a tumbling wall of azalea, Dani between us. We’re grinning at a camera held by a ninety-year-old tourist from Bath, England. Her name was Mabel Hodge and we ended up taking her to a gumbo joint where she out-ate the three of us. I set the photo in front of Claypool. He looked at me, raised a questioning eyebrow.

  I told him what I needed. He did a little dance and said to come back in an hour.

  Barlow lived in a brick split-level, nothing spectacular. The garage door was open and we saw that the sergeant liked big toys, including a tri-wheel ATV, a couple of dirt bikes, and the vintage Harley Panhead Pettigrew had mentioned, a low-slung hog encrusted with chrome.

  We pulled into the driveway and got out, Harry carrying a bucket of fried chicken from Popeye’s. He fished out a drumstick, set the bucket on the hood. We leaned against the Crown Vic and ate chicken until a drapery twitched, followed by the front door banging open. Barlow stepped to the stoop and looked at us in disbelief. Harry waved his drumstick in greeting.