A Garden of Vipers

by Jack Kerley

  I was in a padded cell.

  Footsteps outside the door, slow and careful. No more electricity, I thought. Not now. Leave me alone.

  The slat slid open and eyes searched the room, found me on the bed. I saw a sock puppet beside the eyes and sighed with relief.

  “What are you doing, Carson?”

  “I’m resting, Freddy.”

  “You shouldn’t be in there, Carson,” he chided.

  “Why’s that?”

  “That’s Lucas’s room.”

  I heard a sound of hard-sole footsteps and Freddy scampered away. The door squeaked open. Crandell stepped into the room, his face bright with false bonhomie.

  “Whoa there, Ryder. You look like you been out partying all night long. You got to crank it back now and then, boy.”

  I mumbled curses his way. It made his smile brighter.

  “You was yelling some things while we were playing. Trying to make like you had it all figured out. It was fun to hear.”

  “I’m pulling some pieces together, Crandell. Like why you’re here. And what you’re protecting.”

  He walked to the side of the bed, raised a questioning eyebrow. “And just what is it I’m protecting, Ryder?”

  “The family’s reputation.”

  “Interesting theory. Make it go somewhere.”

  “Lucas was falling apart, decompensating. I’m talking four years back, when he was eighteen, when these sorts of problems usually present. The family knew about it, knew Lucas got the bad seed. He had a crazy uncle, Tree-house Boy or whatever. Insanity repeating in the family. But intervening in Lucas’s madness would mean…what? Committing him? Embarrassment? Bringing up sordid bits of Maylene’s history and humiliating her all over again?”

  The breadth of Crandell’s smile was unsettling. “Hang on a sec, Ryder….” he said, jogging from the room, returning seconds later with a chair. He sat it in reverse, arms crossed on the chair back.

  “I got to sit, Ryder. Listening to your theories is better than a movie. OK, keep going.”

  I glared at him and continued. “Then one day Lucas does the big wig-out. Kills Frederika Holtkamp. She was Freddy’s teacher. Freddy mentioned her name the other day.”

  Crandell nodded. “She was Fred’s teacher for years. Brought that boy a long way, I hear.”

  “The Kincannons knew Lucas was about to flip out, knew the signs well enough to stay on Lucas’s trail. They were too late, finding him under the microwave tower, covered with Holtkamp’s blood.” I lifted my head from the pillow. “Was that when they called you in for the dirty work, Crandell? To co-opt Barlow? It was your idea to pull Pettigrew to Montgomery, get him off the case, right?”

  “What’d make this movie perfect,” Crandell chuckled, “was if I had me some Milk Duds.”

  His grin was maddening. I said, “I know about Rudolnick, Crandell.”

  “Oh my. Do tell.”

  “I figure Mama K thought her boy could be brought back from the brink of madness. Rudolnick’s drug problem was probably known in a small circle. You found out, set him up for a fake bust. From that point on, he belonged to the Kincannons. Rudolnick consulted at Mobile Regional Hospital, right? The Kincannons give big bucks to MRH. Carrot and stick. One hand has money, the other can slip an arrest report into the system. Easy when you own cops like Shuttles, right?”

  Crandell clapped his hands. Stomped his feet on the floor. “You ever think of renting out as an entertainment center, Ryder? You’re amazing.”

  “Rudolnick wanted out, conscience maybe. But that couldn’t happen, could it? Leland Harwood handles the disposal. He takes the fall, but a paid-off group of witnesses sends him on a light flight. He gets promised big compensation when he gets out. But he’s a loose end, a talker. You drop Tommy the Bomb on him.”

  Crandell shook his head, sighed. “I wish you hadn’t been at the prison that day, Ryder. This could all have been avoided.”

  “We would have dug you up, Crandell. Just from a different direction. Answer me one thing: Why did Lucas kill Taneesha Franklin? Miss Gracie keeps the music on during the day when no one’s here. WTSJ. Did Lucas form a bond by listening to her?”

  Crandell stood, picked up the chair. He was leaving.

  “Come on, Crandell,” I yelled. “Give me something.”

  He turned, a big smile on his face.

  “You got a couple things right, Ryder. But you ain’t near the core.”

  “What’s the core?”

  He winked. “This whole shitaree ain’t nothing more than a little family business. That’s all.” He checked his watch. “Business calls. Enjoy breathing, Ryder. You got less than a day of it left.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Nautilus started to put music on, sorting through a stack of recently played CDs, nothing feeling right. He knelt to a shelf of vinyls, flicked through the titles, the musicians: Armstrong, Bechet, Beiderbecke, Coltrane, Johnson, Monk, Parker, Rainey, Spanier, Teagarden…a century of jazz and blues. Nothing sounded right. For the first time he could ever remember, there was nothing he wanted to hear. He fell into the couch and willed his head to stop thinking. Wait on the call from Hembree.

  An hour later his phone rang. He checked the incoming number: Forensics.

  “What you got, Bree?”

  “You don’t live too far, do you, Harry?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Hembree was alone with the kayak when Nautilus arrived, the skinny Forensics expert standing with his hand on its surface. Hembree looked up, saw Nautilus.

  “We spoke with the kayak’s manufacturers, Harry, WaveDesign out in San Diego. They’re big on engineering, their niche in the market. They do impact tests, strength tests. Drop the things from cars going sixty miles an hour, slam them with big boats, little boats, jet skis. They float them in front of oil tankers to see what pops up in the wake. They’ve even devised a torsion test where they—”

  “Bree…”

  “Sorry. We e-mailed WaveDesign photos of the kayak, close-ups, full-lengths, micros. They called back with more questions, wanting additional photos from other angles. MacCready talked their lingo, made it easier. The WaveDesign folks were fascinated by the problem.”

  “And?”

  Hembree looked side to side. All the other staffers were gone for the day or in other parts of the building. He lowered his voice.

  “Were you guys working on anything dangerous?”

  “It’s possible. Why?”

  “From everything the folks at WaveDesign could ascertain, the kayak’s been run over by a vehicle. Several times.”

  “Tire marks?”

  “None, but all someone had to do was drop a heavy-duty tarp over the surface. Damage without tracks.”

  Nautilus scratched his fingernail over the gouges in the surface of the boat.

  “Faked, you’re saying?”

  “Someone may have wanted this thing to look like it’d been plowed under by a big-ass ship. Nothing’s washed ashore?”

  “Let me get an update.” Harry dialed the Coast Guard, asked for Sanchez, held his breath.

  Sanchez came on. “It’s not quite what I expected. We’ve had a wind shift. Wind’s been running with the current for ten hours. When the wind and current are at cross purposes, so to speak, a, uh, floating object might lay motionless in the water, pushed toward shore by current and waves, pushed out by wind. With the conditions as they stand, I expected we’d see something by now.”

  “It’s rare to not see something?”

  “I still wouldn’t be hopeful, Detective Nautilus. Not after this much time. It pains me to say that.”

  “Thank you.” Nautilus clicked off, dropped the phone in his pocket.

  “Not so much as a scrap of cloth, Bree.”

  Hembree thought a long moment. “What should I do with this information, Harry? There’s no investigation number for the kayak on the books. It’s not official.”

  “Let’s keep it that way for a while.”
r />   Hours passed. The door opened. Miss Gracie stepped inside.

  “The only people watching are outside waiting for someone who ain’t coming yet.”

  She kicked off the brakes on the bed and grabbed the push bar, wheeling me out into the common area. The lights were lowered and the room was suffused with amber light, like candlelight. The shades over the windows were drawn tight.

  Low music drifted from hidden speakers, an old Motown piece I couldn’t identify. A radio station, I assumed WTSJ. Miss Gracie spun the bed to angle me down a wide and dark hall jutting from the large room. She stopped at the door. I saw Freddy asleep on a large bed, the broad, flat face, button nose. Beside Freddy, on the pillow, was the dog puppet.

  “That boy won’t sleep right unless he can touch the puppet,” she said. “It’s real to him.”

  “Freddy has Down syndrome?”

  “He don’t know what he’s got, what he don’t got. Of everything, Freddy got the best.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s got the run of the place in here. That’s the rule. He’s allowed outside.”

  “I saw him outside last week. With security.”

  “Freddy gets what he wants. He just asks. That’s what’s supposed to happen; people get what they want.”

  “Heaven.”

  She looked away.

  “He’s a Kincannon child, isn’t he?” I asked. “Freddy?”

  She stared the ancient eyes at me, like weighing my soul for a journey.

  “He Miz Kincannon’s third boy, born between Racine and Nelson.”

  I looked at Miss Gracie, let my eyes ask the question.

  “He got born,” she said. “Not long after, he died. Leastwise, that’s what most people got told.”

  She pushed me to the next doorway. I saw a gray-skinned, goggle-eyed apparition with a head like a pumpkin. The bars of the bed had been wrapped with foam to protect the head. The mattress was thick, like it was puffed with air. The man’s eyes turned to mine and I took an impression of inestimable sadness.

  “Who is that, Miss Gracie?”

  “Mister Johnny.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He come out with the water on his brain and some other ’flictions.”

  “Hydrocephaly.”

  “He ain’t much work. Miz Kincannon always gets the best medical things, just got new beds to fight the sores. We had a problem with sores for years. It’s fixed now.”

  “How old is Mister Johnny?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  We passed another door. Inside, curled in a tight ball, was a man with mocha skin. I noted his mouth had been repaired, a cleft palate, I assumed. Stunted fingers jutted from flipperlike hands. The floor was padded, soft. There were toys in the corner, simple ones, a ball, inflatable blocks, an elementary jigsaw puzzle.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Tyler.”

  “He looks young.”

  “Tyler’s just turned twenty-two.”

  Tyler’s eyes opened and he made wet sounds that seemed to express happiness. His nose was running. Miss Gracie stepped into the room and pulled a tissue from a box at bedside, gently wiped his nose. She stroked his dark hair and cooed in his ear for several minutes and his eyes softened back into sleep. I saw her fingers brush his arm before she turned back in my direction.

  We rolled onward for a few feet and stopped. She turned her face away, shame in her voice. “They ain’t nothing I can do to help you. It will come back to hurt others. I can’t do it. I thought you should know.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  She took the bedrails and wheeled me onward.

  “How many people are here, Miss Gracie?”

  “Five lives here. Four, I mean, with Lucas gone.”

  “Freddy, Johnny, Tyler…three. That leaves one.”

  The ancient eyes studied me again. “We’ll get there soon enough.”

  I went fishing for information. “I met Lucas briefly. I hear he’s very bright. Is that true?”

  She walked slow and her stockings hissed with every step. It put a soft rhythm behind her words as we moved through the halls of the building.

  “You could see the smart pour off Lucas like heat. He was real different that way. The Kincannons, well, most of them are good-looking people.”

  “But not real bright?”

  “Ain’t much in them but vanilla pudding. Not dumb, but not smart, neither. Except for Miz Maylene, but her smarts are for jerkin’ people the way she needs. The boys know about making money, but ever’body knows money pulls money, so it’s no big deal. They all got a meanness they try and hide ’cept when no one’s looking. But a person always ends up what they are.”

  “They come here? The brothers?”

  “Mister Buck comes the most. He lives across the way. Miz Kincannon lives near, too. Mister Buck only comes ever’ now and then. I think Miz Kincannon makes him.”

  Buck lives across the way. I was in one of the houses on the sprawling Kincannon estate. At least I now knew that much.

  We came to an elevator. She inserted a key and pressed a button. I heard the whirr of a descending elevator. Miss Gracie waited with her arms crossed, watching the closed door. The years fell away in the subdued light, and I saw what a beautiful woman she must have been in her youth, the Egyptian features time had highlighted, not diminished.

  The door hissed open. We ascended to the next floor, a soft bing announcing our arrival. I was rolled into a ballroom-size open space, a surprise, given the classic external architecture of the house.

  The space was masculine, with slatwood floors, heavy wood and leather furnishings, oak wainscoting rising half the distance to fourteen-foot-high ceilings. The windows were large, with flowing scarlet drapes. There were plush carpets and brass lamps. There was a massive stone fireplace at the far end of the room. The air was cool and comfortable and smelled of bay rum and wood polish. The lights were dim, but the space seemed suffused with its own internal illumination.

  The area facing the elevator was an office setting. A massive burled-wood desk centered an oriental carpet of red and gold. A green banker’s lamp cast a soft glow across the desk.

  Behind the imposing desk, in a high-backed chair, sat a white-haired old man. He was small, lean, and compact, with shoulders unbent by time. His face was pink and calm and neatly shaven, his eyebrows full, his hair unshorn for years, flowing like a snowy mane. He wore a red velvet robe. Beneath the desk I saw blue pajama pants, leather slippers over bare feet.

  The old gentleman was writing in a tablet with a fountain pen. His hands seemed delicate, the nails manicured. He worked with diligence, writing a few words, pursing his lips over what he’d written, continuing. He seemed oblivious to our presence.

  “What you working on, Mister Buck?” Miss Gracie asked.

  The old man looked up. It took several seconds for our presence to register.

  “The answer to everything,” he said, his voice dry and faint. He returned to his work.

  “May we see?”

  His hands shook when he wasn’t writing. He licked his lips and hoisted the page for us to view. Meaningless scribbles. He giggled, a strand of drool falling from the side of his mouth. Miss Gracie made comforting childlike noises in his direction, returned me to the elevator. The doors hissed shut.

  “Buck Kincannon Senior, right?” I said. “He looks healthy. Glowing.”

  “Mister Buck wear a diaper. He sleep fifteen hours a day. Half the time, I spoon food in him. Car’s all shiny, but the motor’s burned up.”

  The whole second floor was a sham, a theatrical set to give Daddy Kincannon a sense of place after all his years in business. The elevator door opened on the first floor.

  “Why did you show me Mister Buck?” I asked.

  A long pause. “He wanders, like Freddy. If you see him moving around, it’s best you know he ain’t tryin’ to hurt you. You understand?”

  I found her tone discor
dant, almost imploring. I said, “I understand.” But I didn’t.

  Miss Gracie wheeled me down the hall, again passing the occupied rooms.

  “Lucas is kept in the red room?” I asked. “The padded room?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “When he’s bad? When his madness presents?”

  Another pause. “Mr. Lucas go in there when his mama come. She can look at him through the door. It’s how she’s been told.”

  “To keep her safe from him?”

  “To keep something safe for someone.”

  A sleepy voice came from behind us. “Carson? Is that you?”

  Miss Gracie spun the bed. Freddy was at his doorway, watching. The puppet hung from his hand.

  “What you doing up, Mister Freddy?” Miss Gracie asked. “You supposed to be sleeping.”

  “I saw Carson. Puppy and I want to play.”

  “You get right back in that bed. I’m takin’ this fella on a look-see an’ we don’t need any company.”

  “No fair.”

  “Get yourself in bed now, mister. You can play when it’s morning.”

  Freddy grumbled and pouted back to his bed. He jumped in, pretended to fall asleep, growling out fake snores. He half-opened one eye and winked at me, like he’d put a big one over on Miss Gracie.

  She sighed as she pushed me past the room. “That boy think he’s so cool.”

  “Boy? He must be nearing his forties.”

  “He still a child, always be one.” She looked at her watch. “I got to make checks, change diapers, make sure Freddy got his butt in bed. If that boy don’t get a full eight, he’s cranky all day. I’ll be back once more ’fore I turn off the lights.” She started to the door, stopped. Turned her head to me, her eyes dark with mystery.

  “You don’t say nothin’ to no one about that little ride you took, that’s the way, right?”

  “What ride, Miss Gracie?”

  CHAPTER 42

  I stared at the slatted door and replayed what I’d learned during Miss Gracie’s tour. I now knew my location. I knew who was in here with me, and perhaps a bit of why.