by Thomas Laird
“No, Jimmy. Just the head,” the Missing Persons detective says.
“You already know what we think,” I tell Malloy.
“Yeah. You’re probably right. It’s usually the other half of the dynamic duo.”
“But we haven’t got shit, and that’s the first thing that’ll occur to Skotadi,” Doc laments.
“So what’s next on your agenda?” Donny asks us.
“We see if Derek’s taken any long road trips to Louisiana, lately,” I add.
*
Again, there is no credit card trail. We call his bank again, and the only substantial withdrawal was the $400 we already know about, and Skotadi’ll probably claim that he blew it at Arlington on the ponies. Or that he bought groceries with it. He was very clever to use cash. But then we’d expect him to do the smart things if he was trying to get rid of his wife. He doesn’t strike me as being stupid. There are lots of other flaws in what might laughably be called his character, but being dumb, in the figurative sense, is not one of them.
So we go to Skotadi’s office right before Doc and I get off shift. His door is opened.
“My sympathies,” I say.
“Mine, too,” Doc adds.
“Very touching. Now why are you really here?” he snarls up at us.
“Nothing else,” I tell him.
“You’re a terrible liar, Parisi.”
“Me?” I ask with a straight face.
“Yeah. You and your girlfriend both.”
Doc steps toward him before I can grab hold of him.
“You don’t seem the grieving widower, asshole,” my partner tells him.
Skotadi stands up aggressively, now.
I yank Doc back toward me.
“Let’s go,” I tell my partner. “Before it gets ugly.”
“I know what you bastards think,” Skotadi seethes. “But if you come around me one more time, I’ll have at you with a harassment suit. I’ve got a great lawyer, and he likes to exercise his skills on cops.”
“You have to get on with your life, Derek,” I smile. “Don’t dwell on the past. By the way, you look a little pale. Had trouble sleeping, lately?”
He colors dark red quickly, and I haul Doc and myself back out of Skotadi’s doorway.
Derek steps out as we leave, but we don’t turn toward him. We keep walking.
I expect him to fling a few expletives our way, but they never arrive.
“We really don’t need another harassment thing, Jimmy. They tire me out.”
“I’m not planning on getting involved in that kind of shit with him. But we’re going to get serious about this thing, Doc. Let’s see if our Captain will get us vouchers for a trip to Louisiana.”
“Hot down there, James, even though it’s October.”
The Captain grants us the money to fly down to this backwoods piece of swamp, but once we land in the airport in Louisiana, it’s still an hour and a half drive to some godforsaken shithole called Plank. We received instructions from the State Police on how to navigate our way there. We used a rental car, but this one’s not a copper ride. It’s a Chevy Chevette.
The air works, thank Christ. We both almost wilted when we got off the plane. It reminded me of Bong Son, the place where I bled a little, back in the War. It isn’t the number on the thermometer; it’s the unreal intensity.
This guy’s name is Leonard Tare, and as soon as he opens the door to his ramshackle abode, I know he’s ex-military. Still has the gung ho shaved head. Still clean-shaven. I figure he uses a straight razor with cold water or no water at all every single dawn.
“Come in,” is all he says.
There’s nothing to sit on but a bench that sits next to a lone table in what must pass for a kitchen.
“You’ll excuse the lack of homey items, Officers.”
“Detectives,” I correct.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. We’re just here to hear your side of it.”
“Well, I didn’t kill her,” Tare smiles.
“We know,” Doc grins.
“You think that reptile killed her?” I ask him.
He remains standing, in at at-ease stance, as if we’re MPs grilling him.
“You don’t have to stand up,” I say. “You can take it easy. Nobody thinks you killed her. Not us, and not the locals, either.”
“I’m not all concerned about that. I know you didn’t come to lock me away. I just don’t do well with po-lice types. No offense?”
“No offense,” Doc smiles at him.
“I’d get y’all a drink, but I really am out of supplies. I was going to the store directly.”
“We’re good, Leonard. Military?”
“Me? Yeah. Navy.”
“Special forces?” I continue.
“Yessir.”
“This isn’t a barbeque,” I laugh.
He tries to smile, but he looks weary. The same kind of fatigue I saw in Skotadi’s face when we entered his office.
“You’d be pretty aware of what goes on in this bayou, this swamp,” Doc tells him.
“Yeah. I pretty much know what’s happening around me.”
“You didn’t hear anything going on around you in the last few weeks? Like a car driving up by the water, say? And then someone pulling back out onto that dirt road out front?”
“Kids come here to party, once in a while, but not very often. The gators are the best security system a man could have. I might’ve heard a vehicle nearby late at night, but I don’t pay much mind to it. They hear some splashing and they run for cover.
“But I never noticed any out of towners stopping by this dock late at night. If I thought strangers were out there, I would’ve used the scatter gun on them. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have come and gone, though, because once I’m dead tired, I sleep like a corpse. I left that light-sleeper shit back in the jungles.”
“I know what you mean. I hear you,” I tell Tare.
“You think someone dumped that poor soul into the drink so’s she’d be eaten. Right?”
“Yeah. That’s what we think,” Doc tells Leonard.
“I don’t suppose much scares you, living out here,” I say.
“Not much.”
I look into those bloodshot eyes, and I think I’m looking at a sleepwalker. Except I don’t think he’s asleep or that he’s been sleeping much, lately. So I’m wondering what got to him. He’s seen carnage before, where he’s been. That head popping out of the alligator might have shocked him a little, but I know something else is going on with Leonard Tare.
“You have something else to say?”
He looks as if he’s about ready to dismiss us, that’s he’s told us everything he’s going to. And then he suddenly scans our eyes.
“Y’all believe in ghosts?”
“No. Why?” I ask.
“I seen something. On the dock. And a neighbor lady of mine seen something, too. It was as clear as you two are, right now. A mist, like.”
“A mist?” Doc asks.
“It moved peculiar. It wasn’t like any fog I seen out of the bayou. Not ever.”
“You’re serious?” I ask him. But I already know the answer.
“You think you know who did this?” he demands.
“We have someone in mind,” I confirm.
“Then you better take him because I don’t think that thing on my dock is gonna go away until you put him in the jailhouse. Or better, until they put him to sleep for doing her.”
“You have a doctor, Leonard?”
He looks at me curiously.
“You think I’m nuts?”
“No. I think you look all worn out. Like you haven’t had any sleep in a while.”
“Soon’s I take sleep in my eyes, it’s out there, in my mind. It spooked me. I can’t get shut of it.”
“They could give you something to knock you out,” Doc explains.
“Then the gators would crawl in here and put me to sleep for good.”
�
��Maybe you could stay in town for a while. Maybe one of the motels on the highway.”
He looks at me as if I’m the one who’s crazy.
“This is all I got. I’m not giving it up. I ain’t leaving. You got to nail this sonofabitch. That’s the only thing that’ll ease me. You get him, and that cloud or whatever it is will go away.”
“The State Police told me that you hung onto the remains for a while before you called them and gave it up,” Doc says.
“Yeah. I called shortly after it started making its nightly rounds on my property. I figured it was the only way I could make it stay away. But I was wrong about that, apparently.”
“What do you mean?” Doc asks.
“It’s still here, every goddam night. Right around midnight. Like clockwork. You could set your goddam watch to that mist. You got to end this.”
There’s a plea in his voice that’s hard to miss.
“We’ll do what we can, Leonard,” I promise.
“I hope so, because if you don’t, I’ll have to come find the bastard myself and deal with him.”
“Now you can’t go doing our jobs for us, Leonard,” I smile.
“That thing out there is gonna kill me by wearing me out if it doesn’t get shut of whoever did this. I’m not the brightest bulb, but I know that much, Detective Parisi.”
He walks us to his excuse for a door as we rise off the bench.
“I’ll make sure the State Police keep you apprised of the situation, Leonard,” I pledge to him.
“That would be a kindness. For true, Detectives.”
Then he shuts the hatch or whatever the hell it is that blocks the opening to the shack. I can’t see how that patchwork of old lumber keeps the wildlife out of his house.
*
We land at O’Hare in late afternoon. I’m going home to clean up. Doc says he’s going directly to his rack, and then lights out.
I haven’t seen Jackie in three days. When she opens the door, I see disappointment on her pretty face.
“Something wrong, Jackie?” I throw forth.
“Yeah, I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
I explain to her that I just got back from the bayou.
“Why would you be down there?”
“A case.”
“In Louisiana?”
“It’s tied to something up here.”
“And you can’t talk about it?” she says.
“You know how it works.”
“Yeah, I know how it works. Come on in.”
She’s got a meal laid out for us. As soon as we sit, she starts up.
“Where do you think we’re headed?” she demands.
“You really are pissed off, no?”
Then her face softens.
“I don’t want to be the bearer of some relationship sermon, Jimmy, but I have to know where we’re headed. For me, it’s starting to become serious.”
“I thought it was serious after about the first fifteen minutes, Jackie.”
The candles are flickering because she’s got a window cracked open. The weather is unusually mild for the middle of October.
“Do you miss your wife?”
Her abruptness stuns me, a little.
“Sure. Yes. “
“But she was different. She wasn’t like my ex.”
“Do you miss him, Jackie?”
“You mean that jerk who fathered my son?”
I nod.
“Not very often. But sometimes. We both have baggage.”
“Yeah. But I like it here with you. I like it anywhere with you.”
“So this is serious between you and me, then.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say it to you in words before now.”
“You want to skip dinner? We can eat later.”
She rises and then blows out the candles on the dinner table, and then a chilled breeze blows into her dining room from the opened window.
Chapter 13
The lawyer is already taking care of Jennifer’s probate on the day before Halloween. He says it might take several weeks to clear, but the money’s on the way.
I haven’t seen Carrie in two weeks. She says she thinks it would seem inappropriate to be balling me while I’m in mourning. She knows I didn’t get along with Jennifer, but Carrie’s the type who cares about appearances. She says to wait another week or two, and then we’ll play it by ear. Her body is her main attribute, but I guess I can live without it for a while longer.
It’s been quiet in my house for the last few weeks, too. Ever since I got the phone call from Missing Persons, that cop Malloy, things have settled down. No more leaks in the shower head and no more fog coming out of the stall. Apparently whatever it was is satisfied with the finding of my wife’s body, and it’s moved on.
But I sometimes have trouble falling asleep. I’ll roll over and over, and I’ll be primed to jump up and seek out whatever it was that picked my john to inhabit.
I still refuse to believe in ghosts. I know it was just a mental thing, but I have problems coming to terms with whatever it was that Carrie claims to have felt in this house. We both couldn’t have the same delusion, could we?
As I said, it’s quiet now. Maybe normalcy will come back in here. Permanent normalcy.
I’d kill her again, if I had it to do over. It wasn’t the money as much it was the hatred for that silly bitch. I wanted Jennifer to suffer, but strangling her was an easy way out for Jenny. I should have drugged her and waited until she came to before I fed her to those goddam alligators. It would’ve been noisier and far more dangerous, but it would’ve satiated the blood lust she aroused in me. I wanted to kill her long before it actually happened, but there was never the clear opportunity to do it, until I choked her in that stall.
I’ve had a few whores in the time since Carrie left me, but they were all freebies. I was merely exacting the toll on them, and I told them if they ever complained I’d cut off their ears and noses and they’d never work again.
I don’t think they really believed I’d do anything like that, but none of them are certain just how far I’d go. There are other Vice cops who rough them up on the streets, and some cops are more brutal than others. And these pieces of human flotsam have a healthy respect for what we can do to them out of bounds. We’ve got the guns and they don’t.
So I fucked a few in the car, and I brought a few of them home for overnighters. I didn’t give a shit if something in the house acted up. In fact, I might have got off watching them freak out with its presence, but the mist never showed up, and the water stayed turned off in there.
Now I think I might even miss it. Maybe I should walk in and confront the goddam presence or thing or whatever the hell it was. Things have gone quiet, so I’ll probably never get the chance to stare it down. I think it frightened me at first, but then it just became annoying, so I’d turn the radio in the bedroom on full blast, and shortly after, it’d seem to go away. The goddam thing probably fed on fear, so I wasn’t going to toss it any meat and potatoes.
IA has also gone silent. I never heard back from them, so my threats to the chickens I’ve been tolling must have worked. Nobody knows nothing, those dumb whores always respond when you ask them a question.
But I see Parisi and Gibron out of the corner of my eye more often, lately. They’re very sly about showing themselves, so I can’t pop a harassment suit on them. They always seem to show up by coincidence.
Like today, in the cafeteria at Headquarters.
They plop themselves down at the table next to mine. I’m halfway through a cheeseburger and fries, and these two pricks show up.
“What is it?” I demand of them.
“What’s what?” Parisi asks, innocent-faced.
“You want something or you wouldn’t be planted near me. So what is it?”
“Sounds like paranoia, Skotadi,” Gibron laughs.
“I’m just fine, asshole.”
“I would think you would be,” Gibron goes on. “All that cash
coming your way. Nice windfall. Where you going on vacation? Vegas? Atlantic City?”
“I don’t gamble.”
“You’re into sure things, then,” Parisi adds.
“Why don’t you two just piss off and sit somewhere else.”
“You haven’t even threatened harassment yet. We wouldn’t be getting our money’s worth, then, would we,” Gibron tells me.
“Heard from IA, lately?” Parisi smiles.
“I can’t hear you.”
“They’re very stubborn bastards. Once they latch onto you, they won’t let go,” Gibron says.
“It’s kind of you to care.”
“Ever been to Louisiana, the northern part?” Parisi inquires.
“Yeah. I like to see the wildlife and the Glades. I been there a few times.”
“Yeah?” Parisi grins. “We were just there. In a shithole called Plank. We talked to the guy who retrieved your wife’s remains.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Poor guy,” Parisi goes on. “He thinks there’s something weird happening on his dock in the middle of the night. Scared the shit out of him. Thought it was the hoo-doo or something. Said it came on like a ball of white fog and then floated around. Thought it might have been some kind of afterglow from your former wife. Can you believe that?”
“Why don’t you two girls just waddle off.”
“I thought you’d be interested in the details of your wife’s demise,” the wop goes on.
“I don’t need to hear all this from the two of you.”
“Well, it is our case, Derek,” Gibron jumps back in.
“Yeah. We’re figuring out how it was that Jennifer got all that way south to get torn up by gators. She didn’t have her car with her, so how do you suppose she got there in the first place?” the shorter Homicide insists.
“You’re the detectives. You tell me.”
I notice they don’t have any food before them.
“We have to be going, Skotadi. We’ll see you around,” Parisi concludes.
They get up and walk off.
I look down at my meal, but I’m not hungry anymore.
*
I force her against the wall, and she cries out. Then it’s finished.
“I missed you, too,” she laughs.
“I missed you, Carrie.”
“I missed you, too. You know that. Didn’t you just feel how much I missed you?”
