A Garden of Vipers

by Jack Kerley

  “I NEED A PARTY!” he screamed, following it with a ragged peal of laughter.

  Kincannon went to the open front door and looked outside, as if inspired by the lightning raging through the treetops. He took a deep breath, madness and fear and triumph all tumbled together in his face. He shook his head as though something jogged in his memory and his eyes refocused on Dani and me, a dozen feet away on the floor.

  I could smell his insanity.

  Buck smiled and trained the weapon on my eyes. The world turned to slow-moving shapes on a shadowed stage: Buck laughing with no sound coming from his mouth, the weapon raising, a single crystal from the ruined chandelier falling like a teardrop, the muzzle of the shotgun a dark and sudden eye set to wink…

  The wicker chair exploding through the vast front window, skidding across the polished floor past Dani and me, glass shards tumbling in its wake.

  “Down, boy,” Buck said to my eyes, the shotgun not wavering an inch, like a chair through a window was as common in his life as lunch. “That you, Race?” Buck yelled at the glass-toothed hole in the wall. “Or is it Nelson? Come on in, guys, we’re having a party.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Nelson ranted, thundering through the foyer into the living room, face bright with anger, finger jabbing at Buck’s eyes. “You teamed up with Lucas, right? Or was it you and Racine? Guess who reads your faxes and phone messages, asshole? It ain’t gonna hap—”

  Nelson was fully in the house now, nose smelling cordite. His eyes took in the shattered lamp, broken furniture, destroyed chandelier. The shotgun in his brother’s hands. Nelson’s eyes found Dani and me cowering beneath the table. He froze, only his eyes moving.

  “Uh, what’s going on, Buck?”

  “A night of love, Nelse.”

  “Love?” Nelson whispered.

  “I get her,” Buck said, jabbing a finger at Dani. “You can have him. It’s fun, Nelson. They never love you more than when you own their souls. They scream their love.”

  Nelson stared at Buck for a few seconds, seemed to understand. Then Nelson regarded Dani and me with accusatory eyes, like he’d become a participant in a nightmare, and it was our fault.

  Nelson, Dani mouthed. Help us.

  My hand crept forward on the floor, picked up a jagged shard of glass, a razor-sharp triangle no larger than a postcard. I slid it beneath me.

  “Here you go, brother,” Buck said, handing Nelson the shotgun. “Let the party begin.”

  Nelson Kincannon held the weapon away from his body, as if it might bite him. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He shot glances toward the door.

  “Just blow off his foot or something, Nelson,” Buck suggested. “Then we can take time with things. The night’s still young.”

  Nelson looked from my face, to Dani’s, back to mine. Buck leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.

  “What’s the matter, Nelson?”

  Nelson Kincannon made a point of pulling up his cuff to check his watch. He sighed, shook his head, handed his brother back the shotgun.

  “I’ve got an early meeting, Buck.”

  Nelson Kincannon turned away and walked out the door like he was leaving a conference room, already scheduling his alibi for the evening. The shotgun turned back to us and the mad fire rekindled in Buck Kincannon’s eyes.

  “More cake for me,” he said. “Yummy.”

  I knew what he wanted. I looked at him and started crying. Sobbing. It wasn’t hard.

  “Don’t, Buck. Please don’t hurt me. I’m begging you, Buck…”

  “Oh yessss,” Buck Kincannon whispered.

  “Please, Buck. I don’t want to die. Let’s just be friends, can we do that? Please, Buck…”

  “Louder,” he said, taking a step closer.

  “I’ll work for you, Buck, be your eyes and ears on the police force. You’ll own me. Whatever you want, Buck, it’s yours, just let…me…”

  I put my face on the floor and began blubbering. I heard his footsteps creep closer, one step, two steps.

  “LOUDER!” he railed.

  “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me…,” I begged, tucking the glass into my palm, feeling it razor into my flesh. Buck stepped forward. I felt the muzzle of the shotgun against my temple.

  “I OWN YOU. I COMMAND YOU TO LIFT YOUR FACE AND SPEAK!”

  “Buck, pleeeease…,” I wailed, bringing my hands to my face as if in terror. Then I lunged forward, upward, knocking the gun aside with my forearm, putting everything into my bad leg, rising, slashing at his hands on the gun, feeling the glass sever gristle and tendon. He howled like an animal as I tumbled over him, dredging the glass through his face, across his eyes. I kept slashing, as if trying to slice my way into his brain, shut it off forever.

  And then Dani was pulling at my back, and we were up and running through smoke-thick air as Buck Kincannon writhed on the floor, hands pressing into the blinded ruination of his face, one cheek flapping loose like a thick red washcloth.

  “Crandell,” he moaned. “Help me, Crandell.”

  Dani and I stumbled out the door as Nelson Kincannon’s headlights reached the end of the long driveway, screeched away down the road, escaping. Dani dragged me to her car.

  Halfway down the lane, she screamed, “Oh God,” pointing to a car careering from the main road onto the drive, swerving, accelerating at us. She whipped the wheel, skidding sideways on the wet pavement. We were slammed in the side, spun. Her car broke through the fence lining the lane, white slats banging off the windshield. The engine stalled. I jumped out, held myself up on the open door. The other car stopped two dozen feet distant, headlamps shining through rain and steam from a busted radiator.

  “Lucas?” the driver bawled. “Is that you, Lucas?”

  Racine Kincannon lurched from his car. Lucas Kincannon and I were the same basic height and build. Racine squinted through swirling steam, his drunken voice shrill and desperate.

  “Lucas. It’s you and me, brother. I fired Crandell. Fuck Nelson and Buck. It’s us, a team. That’s what you meant, right? RIGHT?”

  “Racine Kincannon,” I roared, “you’re under ARREST!”

  Racine made a croaking sound and leapt behind the wheel. He floored the accelerator, smashing through the fence and into the huge golden sculpture of the Brahma bull. The bull snapped off its plinth, thundered to the ground, and rolled to its back, legs rocking skyward amidst clouds of steam. The driver’s door swung open and deposited a passed-out Racine Kincannon on the grass.

  Dani was near shock, so I made my way to Kincannon’s snoring body, found a cell phone in his pocket, made the call, blood pouring from my palm. My good leg gave up and I crumpled to the ground, unable to move. Dani draped herself over me, crying.

  And so we remained for several minutes, until the parade of blue-and-white flashers turned onto the Kincannon property and the curtain fell on the night from hell.

  CHAPTER 51

  Clair and Harry were at my place. The furor had subsided after three days, at least for me. The headlines continued unabated, though, from the Mobile Register to The Wall Street Journal, which page-one’d the headline BIZARRE CRIME ROCKS KEI’S FOUNDING FAMILY: A TALE OF HIDDEN CHILDREN AND DEADLY ACTIONS.

  “It’s time for the five o’clock news,” Clair said, picking up the remote. “Maylene’s supposed to make a statement.”

  The television popped on, a scene outside the federal courthouse in Montgomery. The word LIVE floated in the upper corner of the screen.

  “Look in the crowd…” Clair jabbed her finger at the tube. “Was that Dominick Dunne?”

  “What’s Dominick done?” I asked, thumping in on crutches, my foot in a soft cast and fabric boot, a six-week sentence.

  “A writer. He does a crime show on cable. Kind of a ‘Crime Styles of the Rich and Sleazy.’”

  I watched the camera pan the crowd, zero in on Maylene. She was flanked by two high-wattage lawyers and a woman Dani had once pointed out as a major PR type. Maylene shouldered past the lawye
rs to a bank of microphones on the courthouse steps.

  “Maylene’s going to talk,” Clair said. “Here it comes.”

  “Here comes what?” Harry said.

  “Whitewash and obfuscation and stonewall. She’ll try to dump everything on Crandell, since he’s not around to give his side of the story. She’ll wrap the boys in her wings until the lawyers can get under the hood and tear the wires from the legal engine; years of obfuscation set to come. She’ll spend millions to pervert the system.”

  The camera zoomed in on Mama, face pale and hair white, her eyes tiny black dots. We fell quiet and listened to the reporters’ questions, were knocked back by Maylene Kincannon’s answers.

  “…I never expected to be so deceived…garden of vipers and scoundrels…years of lies and scheming from my own children…”

  “What the hell?” Clair said.

  “…culpable members of my family have been removed from all positions with KEI, no longer welcome in my home…”

  “Jesus,” Clair said. “She’s tossing them to the wolves.”

  “…support all efforts of our state’s judicial system to mete out appropriate punishment for vicious crimes and deceits…testify myself if needed…”

  A reporter asked a question about the children kept in the house. Maylene jutted a righteous chin.

  “My only concern was for the finest care for the children and a life where every wish was fulfilled, every care given. In retrospect, I should have paid more attention to what was occurring elsewhere.”

  Maylene paused. Dabbed the pinpoint eyes with a tissue. She gestured off-camera for someone to join her and turned back to the microphones.

  “My job now is to reestablish my relationship with the one son who has been so horribly maligned, one that I was manipulated to believe had terrible and incurable psychological problems, when in fact…”

  Lucas Kincannon joined his mother, putting a loving arm around her oxlike shoulders. Kissed her powdery cheek. Several people applauded the spontaneous warmth of the moment. Lucas wore a dark suit, white shirt, and superbly knotted tie. He tucked his hands in his pockets and looked into the cameras with gentle shyness, referring questions to his mother or the lawyers.

  Clair stared at the television in disbelief. “Lucas did abduct a woman, right? Mrs. Atkins? With that purse bit?”

  Harry said, “Rumor has it the old lady’s revisiting her story. She may have misunderstood a few things the lad was requesting. I doubt Mrs. Atkins has any worries about the collapse of Social Security.”

  Maylene’s voice lightened and she began chirping about “letting the sun shine on a bright new day in Kincannon stewardship.”

  “Sun shine or s-o-n shine?” Clair said.

  “…fostering change, while continuing a legacy of caring for the community…,” Mama intoned. “…companies now under the expert supervision of professionals…”

  “Lucas is going to be the new Buck,” I said. “Except that Lucas has the brains of a physicist and enough business acumen to grab the reins in weeks instead of years.”

  “Weeks?” Harry raised a dubious eyebrow. I flicked off the television.

  “The whole show’s not taking place in Montgomery. Take a ride with me, Harry.”

  The Kincannon estate seemed unscathed by the bloody hurricane that had blown across its stately grounds. The guardhouse was empty. Harry got out and pushed the gate aside. We drove to the house where I had been imprisoned. The door opened to a somber face.

  “Hello, Miss Gracie. We’ll just be a minute.”

  She started to speak. I held up a silencing finger. “If you want peace, you’ll let this happen.”

  She nodded and stepped aside. I led Harry across the floor to the elevator. My pry marks remained in the door, but it had been polished to a brassy sheen. We stepped inside. It lifted, the bell binging as we stopped.

  I leaned against the side of the car as the door opened, drew Harry back with me.

  “Grace, hon?” said the voice. “You bring that brandy?”

  We stepped into the room. Buck Kincannon Senior was sitting in a chair by a window overlooking the woods. Sunlight streamed through the glass. He wore a dark velvet robe and slippers. His feet were propped on an ottoman. The Wall Street Journal was in his hands.

  “I see the Asian market’s on an upswin—”

  He turned and saw Harry and me. He froze, his eyes so wide they seemed little more than white.

  “Auuh,” he babbled, waving the paper. He let his mouth droop wide, tonguing drool down his chin. He swiped his hand across his mouth, stared at his saliva in wonder.

  “Give it a break, Pops,” I said.

  We stepped back into the elevator. I pressed DOWN. Miss Gracie was sitting on a couch. Holding her breath.

  “One question,” I said. “How did Taneesha get involved?”

  Miss Gracie sighed from somewhere deep.

  “I listen to WTSJ, play it soft over the sound system. Lucas liked listening, especially to Taneesha. He followed her from DJ to reporter. After it seemed clear Dr. Rudolnick wasn’t coming anymore, Lucas wrote an anonymous letter to Miz Franklin. The letter didn’t say much, just that the doctor worked for the Kincannons, had done some strange things, maybe something a reporter might check into. That’s all. I didn’t know what was in Lucas’s letter, but I did mail it for him.”

  “I figured it was something that simple. You helped Lucas escape, right?”

  She looked away, but I stared at her face. She said, “One of the electric locks on his door went out. Pouring water in them does that.”

  I nodded, started to turn away. Her hand touched at my arm.

  “You won’t tell people about…” Her eyes glanced toward the man upstairs.

  “It would accomplish nothing, Miss Gracie.”

  She whispered, “Thank you.”

  Harry and I stepped outside. The grass of the Kincannon estate was so bright and green it seemed illuminated from beneath. A slight breeze sung through the trees. The bull statue remained upended.

  “How’d you know, Cars?” Harry said. “About Daddy Kincannon?”

  “Ory Aubusson put the bug in my head, bro. He said Buck Kincannon let himself go crazy because it was better than having to look at Maylene every day. It got me thinking.”

  Harry frowned. “Mama Kincannon has to know.”

  “I suspect they both played their roles. She got to exercise control, Daddy Kincannon got…” I tried to find words.

  “Heaven?” Harry said.

  “Or maybe just a form of freedom. There he sits in his own private world, everything he wants, waited on hand and foot.”

  “She loves him, doesn’t she? The Grace woman?”

  “I have a suspicion Daddy Kincannon and Miss Gracie go way back together. Twenty-three years at least.”

  I thumped across the lawn toward the car, Harry beside me. He said, “How much of a hand you think Daddy Kincannon had in this?”

  I shook my head. “We’ll never know. A finger, certainly. He knows Buck, Nelson, and Racine lived their lives poised at the brink of self-destruction. All it took was reaching critical mass, as the physicists say. Adding enough energy.”

  “Lucas,” Harry said.

  “Bang.”

  We reached the drive and turned to the house, a white refuge tucked deep in the trees. I said, “I’ll bet Buck Senior’s spent four years teaching Lucas about the business. The boy’s ready to take over.”

  “The company thrives,” Harry mused. “While Daddy continues in his own private heaven. And Mama?”

  “I think she’ll stay out of Lucas’s way.”

  We reached the car. I set the crutches aside and leaned against its sun-warm body, regarding the house for a final moment. Harry leaned beside me, arms crossed.

  He said, “Do you think Lucas knew he was putting Taneesha Franklin in danger to accommodate his plans?”

  “Lucas knew exactly what his family was capable of doing if threatened. Taneesha�
�s questions were a threat. Lucas needed a threat to start the ball rolling.”

  Harry considered my words.

  “But that would mean…”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Exactly. Lucas is every bit as amoral as his brothers, just ten times smarter.” I clapped Harry’s wide back. “Ain’t it a grand day in hell, brother?”

  EPILOGUE

  I dropped Harry at his house, then stopped by Dani’s home. Beginnings are always easier than endings. But endings are better when you can say you’ve learned something important. We both had that much, at least.

  It was twilight when I crossed the bridge to Dauphin Island, the sky near dark, the western horizon painted with crimson. Pulling to my house, I saw Clair on my deck, standing at the railing and watching a flight of pelicans skim the foam at the surf line.

  Three hours had passed and I was surprised she’d stayed. I parked, hobbled upstairs, moved straight through the house to the deck. She turned from the railing as I stepped outside, the night breeze rippling over her white sundress, her arms bare. She pushed a tousle of dark hair from her eyes as I crossed the deck.

  “I’m surprised to see you here, Clair.”

  “You’ve been running, going to meetings, dodging the press. I haven’t had a chance to see you alone, to tell you that…I was so afraid….”

  She began blinking away tears and I drew her close. Her head leaned against my chest and the rising moon drew a white line across the water. I suddenly knew the length and breadth of her existence as fully as I knew my own, felt her heart in my chest and my breath in her lungs, as if we had lost our boundaries. The world shivered and eased to a stop. Everything became still and peaceful and silent.

  “Clair?” I said.

  She leaned her head back, her eyes both frightened and expectant. Her lips were parted. I pulled her close and pressed my lips to hers. It started as a chaste kiss, blossomed into something more. Long seconds passed before she leaned away, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes damp, her head shaking.