A Garden of Vipers

by Jack Kerley

  CHAPTER 35

  “The DuCaines?” Harry asked the old man. “That was Maylene’s family?”

  “Family ain’t the word. Carnival? Sideshow? That works better, the DuCaine sideshow. They lived over in Fairhope, had lived there since, I don’t know, the whole place started up.”

  “First a social experiment, then an artists’ colony,” Harry said.

  “The whole DuCaine family was a social experiment. How we hooked up with them was me and Buck Senior was in our thirties, prime beef, thinking it was time to do some planting.”

  “Start a family?”

  “Man needs something behind him besides money. I was partial to this girl about twenny-five, Cora, lived down the street from the DuCaines. Nothing ever come of it, ’cept me, a few times. Payoff wasn’t worth time invested.”

  “Daddy!” Ella said, coming out the door with two sweet teas she’d brewed for Harry and me, plus Aubusson’s refill. Ella set down the tray, shook her head, retreated to the house. Aubusson grinned, turned back to Harry and me.

  “But a couple times Buck had gone over to Cora’s with me and he’d seen this sassy little piece of fluff out walking. Stuck-up type, nose way up like she’s sniffin’ air the rest of us ain’t allowed.”

  “Maylene?”

  “She let herself turn into a fat ol’ bulldog shape today. But back then that hoity-toity bitch had a butt like twin melons bobbin’ in a tub. Lord, that woman had a shape. So we started going over to the DuCaine spread: four acres a few blocks from the bay, big house in the middle. One of those places with rooms sticking out every whichaway, added as needed. Cora never went over to the DuCaines, called it a nuthouse. She wasn’t the only one thought that.”

  “A strange place?” I asked.

  “You’ve heard about the crazy aunt in the attic? The DuCaines had one. You’d be over there and hear her upstairs—howling, laughing, cussin’ like a sailor. One time when I was there, she came screeching through the house, naked as a jay, feet slapping, titties flopping, and ran through the door to the porch. And I mean through the door, leaving the screen flapping in the frame. A couple of the servant types wrestled her down, but not before she kicked two teeth outta one of ’em.”

  “The aunt went off a lot?”

  “That wasn’t nothing. Most of the family seemed tore up in some way. One of Maylene’s brothers didn’t do nothing but sit in a chair and look out the window, his eye blinking like he was sending Morse code. Had a sister, young, already taking after Auntie—running in circles, ripping at her hair, pulling fits in the middle of the room. Had another brother who’d built a house in one of the live oaks, pretty much lived up there. When he came down it was to make fires. I never saw much of him. There was a retarded sister who just kind of walked around town touching things.”

  “The mother of the family. Where was she?”

  “She was an ar-teest. Spent most of her time painting things, carrying around one of those painting racks—”

  “Easels?”

  “That’s it. All she did, paint. By the bay, mainly. One time she’d paid a bunch of folks to frolic nekkid in the water, sat there painting away, ‘figure studies,’ I remember she called them. The police come and suggested maybe she’d do better to study at home with the blinds shut.”

  “The father?”

  Aubusson tapped his temple. “Smart. The brittle kind of smart that comes to a point at one thing. He sat around all day figuring out hard problems that use letters instead of numbers…”

  “Physics, maybe?”

  Aubusson nodded. “He was too brittle to work with people, but places sent him things to figure out. Like the government…whichaway rockets will head, stuff like that. Got paid good money, which kept the whole circus afloat. He never seemed to notice anything but the stuff in his head.”

  “And Maylene invited people into this place? Her home?”

  A wicked grin. “Oh Lord, no. We’d just show up. It was cruel, I guess, but Buck and me’d come pecking at her door, say we was thirsty, could we have a lemonade please, Miss Maylene? Then we’d hang around and catch the show: Brother drooling in his lap while his eye ticked like a clock, Sissy fighting with the servants, Auntie racing around with her bush showing, Tree-house Boy shoutin’ down from the branches. It was better’n anything Hollywood ever invented.”

  “I’ve seen situations similar to that, Mr. Aubusson. Where everything’s out of control. Sooner or later…” Harry let the words float in the air.

  “Yep. Bad things catch up, don’t they? The retarded sister disappeared one day. Police found her laying in a bare lot in Bayou La Batre, all cut up, messed up inside, too. She lived, but you couldn’t tell by looking at her.”

  Harry looked into Aubusson’s eyes. “Finish it out.”

  Aubusson leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, looked into the distance.

  “Tree-house Boy…Jimmy? Jerry? I don’t know much but rumors that come to me years later. There were some problems around the DuCaines’ household. Dogs disappearing in the neighborhood, found all chopped up in the woods. Then the kid got whipped up, started fights, big yellin’ and screamin’ things. One day he took off in one of the cars. He stayed gone for a few weeks. It gets real clouded here.”

  I leaned forward. “I’m used to the weather.”

  Aubusson shot a glance toward the door. Lowered his voice. “It was said he killed a woman who’d once done gardening work for the DuCaines. Guess he’d gotten an obsession on her or whatever. Went at her real bad with a knife, then burned down her trailer. Nothing ever came of it—if it happened—and Tree-house Boy was never arrested that anyone noticed. But he was never seen again. And nothing was ever tied to the DuCaines.”

  “No publicity,” Harry said. “No nothing.”

  “Like it never happened,” I said. “Money can do that.”

  Harry turned to Aubusson. “All this happened over the span of what, in terms of years?”

  “All during the time Buck was courting Maylene. No matter what’d happen around us, she’d get up to get us another drink, whatever, keep them melons dancing. She knew what she had, she knew how to work it—she melted him into something she could shape like she wanted. Buck was her key out of crazy town.”

  “A happy marriage?”

  “Buck needed someone to run him, but she flat ran over him. Do this, do that, talk like this, dress like that. Took over every second of his life. All their lives.”

  “Turned an out-of-control youth into a life of absolute control,” I said.

  Aubusson clenched a fist until his knuckles turned white, held it up. “Control like this,” he said. “She finally got to shape the world like she wanted. A closed place, ain’t many invited inside.”

  I said, “Daddy Kincannon isn’t even there anymore.”

  Aubusson took a long drink of his whiskey, his face hidden behind the glass.

  “I think maybe he found his own way free.”

  “Pardon me?” I said.

  “I don’t think he got the Alzheimer’s like they say. I think he let hisself go crazy ’cause it was a better way to live than with her.”

  Aubusson shook the ice in his glass, empty. He set it aside. I figured he was about talked out.

  “Tell me more about Maylene’s children, Mr. Aubusson,” I said.

  “Never held much hope for the kids, myself. I remember being over there one time. One of the kids’ birthdays was going on in the other room, kid was eleven or twelve. Racine, or maybe Nelson, took a bite of Buck’s cake when he wasn’t looking, grabbed a forkful. I see Maylene motion Buck to her side, whisper in his ear. He turns and sees the missing bite. A minute later he marches over and punches his brother in the mouth.”

  Harry said, “Don’t let anyone take from you. Not even your brother. That was the lesson?”

  Aubusson sipped from his glass. “Or maybe Maylene just liked winding him up and setting him loose, her little soldier. Wasn’t no favoritism. Next time around it might
be Nelson set loose on Buck.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t get in trouble growing up,” Harry said.

  “They got in scrapes, but nothing too bad. A little money cured the problems. Strange thing is, for all their weird-ass upbringing, the kids are boring. The older ones, that is. No spark. Put you to sleep just listenin’ to them a few minutes. But Lucas had sparkle from the git-go. A fire in him.”

  “Lucas?” I said, shooting Harry a glance. “Who’s Lucas?”

  “Miss Maylene’s last boy. Came as a surprise when she was in her forties. Strange kid. Born too late to be a hippie, but had that hippie thing, you know? Questioned everything, argued about everything, hated everything. Took streaks where he’d get pissed off, yell about having to live with a bunch of capt’list pigs, run off across the country. Got all the way to California when he was fifteen, Maylene had to send private investigator types to bring him back.”

  “Lucas sounds like trouble,” I said. Or, perhaps, decompensating: falling apart mentally.

  “He was ten handfuls of trouble when he wanted to be, but everybody agreed he was whip-smart. Had his granddaddy’s brains, but didn’t get the brittle. Helluva lot brighter than his puddinghead siblings.”

  “Puddinghead?” Harry said. “I thought the Kincannon brothers were business geniuses, growing the empire and all.”

  Aubusson grinned. “A lotta folks assume that, but like the old song says, it ain’t necessarily so. Take young Buck. Boy’s not an ignoramus, he just ain’t sharp. Buck knows things about business…number one being what phone numbers to call for advice. The Kincannons hire the best advisors, best financial consultants, best lawyers. It’s hard to make money, a lot easier to hang on to it.”

  “Let’s get back to Lucas,” I said. “He had a destructive side?”

  “I know he busted some stuff up around the house. But the boy could be a charmer if he wanted, sweet. Even when he was ten, twelve years old, he could carry on a conversation better’n most adults. I liked the little monster, myself, even though he onct called me a running dog lackey for the system, whatever that meant. At least he had a personality.”

  “Where is Lucas now?” I asked, keeping my voice even.

  Aubusson drank the liquid from melting ice, flung the ice into the yard.

  “I’d heard he was calming down, but nope. When he turned eighteen, he up and left. Ran as far as he could and won’t have nothing to do with the family, hasn’t been heard from in—what’s it been?—about four years now. Got himself chopped clean out of the will, probably what he wanted. I hear he’s up in Canada or Alaska, living in the mountains, doing things with beads.”

  “Or maybe not,” Harry said, so quietly only I heard.

  CHAPTER 36

  Harry and I entered the department through the back door. Vince Raines from Auto Theft was in the hall sipping coffee and tacking a page to the bulletin board. It was in-house stuff: folks selling a car or boat or had a litter of kittens to dispense.

  Vince saw us, nodded. “You guys don’t need a jon boat, do you? Just put one on sale. Two years old. Cost thirty-five hundred with a ten-horse motor. Yours for twelve hundred even.”

  “I got a kayak,” I said. “And an aversion to motors.”

  “I got an aversion to seasickness,” Harry said.

  “Just thought I’d…hey, I just got back from vacation. Mitch Burdon told me you two stopped by, were looking into something.”

  “We were trying to track down some stolen cars,” Harry said.

  “Find ’em?”

  “Mitch checked by make and model,” Harry said. “Upscale machines that weren’t in the system. Mitch thought they might have been yanked from the airport, owners still out in Hawaii or whatever.”

  “Like what?” Vince asked.

  “Nineteen ninety-seven Porsche turbo, 1958 Mercedes roadster, a 2004 Beamer.”

  Vince’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “I dunno. I got kind of a weird call last week. I was working alone. Got a call that some fancy cars were missing from a place off Highway 45. ‘Fancy,’ that was the word the caller used. Went to a Quonset-type warehouse, climate-controlled, a collection of cars in storage.”

  “There’d been thefts?” Harry asked.

  “That’s the strange part. The guy that called—a guard or something—was all worked up. Scared. He said to get there quick. I arrived about a half hour later. The guy, a big goofy hick, said it was all a mistake. His boss, the man who owns the vehicles, had sold some and the guy didn’t know. So that was that.”

  Harry said, “I’d sure like to take a look at this place. Mind if Carson and me became vehicle-theft cowboys for an hour?”

  “Saddle up, boys. Lemme draw you a map where this place is.”

  The address led us to a defunct single-runway airfield between a melon field and scrubby woods. I think the KEEP OUT signs outnumbered the TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED signs, but not by much. The only action nearby was an old strip mall–cum–flea market about a half mile down the road. A twelve-foot cyclone fence surrounded a gray Quonset structure, a small guardhouse in front. An industrial-size air-conditioning unit sat beside the hut, and I heard it running. The security was an electronic lock keypad that seemed to control the main gate. I saw a second keypad unit by the door of the hut, two dozen feet away.

  The guardhouse looked little used: weeds growing from pavement cracks, the door half ajar. There was a phone in the guardhouse, a sign on it saying IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, CALL such and such.

  Harry looked at me. “You got an emergency?”

  “I have to take a leak pretty bad.”

  “I’ll phone it in.”

  Harry dialed the number. I wasn’t lying, and crouched between the car and guardhouse to lose some coffee.

  “Someone’s on the way,” he said. “Ten minutes.”

  We leaned against the Crown Vic and watched heat shimmer from the old runway. Eight minutes later a pickup truck pulled into the lot, kicking up gravel.

  The driver jumped out, a heavyset guy, thirties, knock-kneed, belly drooping over a too-tight belt. His face was wide, his cheeks as red as if rouged.

  “What’s the emergency?” he asked, looking worried.

  Harry and I flipped out the buzzers. I said, “We’re following up on a report about some stolen cars.”

  “That’s all cleared up,” he said. “Over a week back.”

  “Oh shit,” I said. “The report got filed wrong again.”

  Harry slapped his forehead.

  “What?” the guy said.

  “We got a new girl sticking reports in the wrong box. We pick it up, see the address, head out. What happened?”

  “It was a mistake. The cars got sold.”

  Harry laughed, clapped his hands.

  “Come on? Really?”

  The guy grinned, happy to tell the story again. “See, what happens is I come by ever’ morning to do a look-see. I’m s’pose to check inside, make sure the temperature and humidity are set right. I opened the door and saw empty spots where three of the cars had been. Nothin’ there. I called the cops, told them. Then I called out to Mr. Kincannon’s office, told his people about the cars bein’ gone.”

  “You mean like Buck Kincannon?” I shot Harry the eye.

  “The one. Got a helluva collection of cars in there. Great to be rich, huh?”

  “What happened next?”

  “Mr. Kincannon came over. Buck. Mr. Nelson, too. I was outside and I heard Mr. Buck inside having a real shit fit. Just yellin’ and screamin’ and throwin’ things. But when he come out he was smilin’ and said the cars was sold a few days before and he was sorry he’d forgot to tell me. Then he took off back to work. Then the cops come about ten minutes later and I explained it all.”

  “Why do you think Buck Kincannon was yelling?”

  The guy shrugged; it didn’t fall under his purview. “I got no idea why rich people do the way they do.”

  We returned to the department where I filled Harry
in on my recent conversation with Tyree Shuttles.

  “Fixated on me?” Harry said. “Logan?”

  “I don’t really know what that’s all about. Shuttles was pretty shook. I told him to relax, wait it out. Logan’s out of here in around a month.”

  Harry drummed his fingers on his desk.

  “Two times Logan’s been wandering around in our area. Like the time he said he was back looking at the Wookiee drawing.”

  “I remember. It was on the floor.”

  “The second time he’s sitting in my chair and says he’s reading the murder book.”

  We sat at our desk and looked at Logan’s area, twenty feet distant. Like our arrangement, Logan and Shuttles had abutting desks in a tri-walled cubicle area.

  “What’s the saying about turnabout?” Harry asked. “It’s fair play?”

  Harry walked over to Logan’s desk, sat. I followed, stood behind him, and kept an eye on the door. Logan was, strangely enough, a tidy kind of guy. Harry lifted a stack of papers, looked in files, checked in Logan’s desk drawers. He lifted Logan’s calendar, then his desk pad.

  “Guess they didn’t slide into the trash by mistake after all,” Harry said, pulling out the two crime scene photos missing from the Franklin book. Taken by the Forensics team, one photo was a wide shot of the Mazda and fifty or so feet surrounding it, rain-wet sidewalk, water running down the gutter. The other was basically the same, except the photographer had climbed the side of Arlin Dell’s truck cab to get the wide downward angle: Mazda, background. A dozen feet ahead of the car I saw the yellow marker indicating where the knife had been found.

  “Why in the hell would Logan want these?” Harry said. “They’re location setters, not close enough to show anything important.”

  He slipped the photos back under the pad and returned to his desk shaking his head.

  “Souvenirs, maybe? The last scene he never worked? Shuttles is right, the son of a bitch is weirding out.”

  Harry headed to the prosecutor’s office, a final meeting before the trial on Monday. Harry would be on the stand a fair amount, grilled by a defense lawyer, and everyone wanted to get their act down. I was just happy the PO preferred Harry to me on such cases. But I had a tendency to ramble when questioned; Harry kept his answers brief, to the point, and had the presence of Thurgood Marshall in a room full of Munchkins.