Morgan James - Promise McNeal 01 - Quiet the Dead

by Morgan James

  Daniel rested an elbow on the table and cupped his face into his hand, remembering. “My buddy had a hard time as a kid in Iowa. I’m not repeating the details; that would be disrespecting him, but I’ve thought a lot about him over the years, and I still don’t know what makes some boys so savage to one another. I’m thinking maybe it’s fear; but I’m not sure. What do you think, Dr. McNeal? You think folks hurt one another out of fear?”

  I didn’t think a lecture on male-to-male violence was what Daniel really wanted, so I decided to be general. “Maybe. A lot of fear can be burned and buried in the human heart. Violence can be the smoke that rises. Although, I have to say, there are times when I agree with the writer, James Lee Burke: ‘Some folks just aren’t wired right.’”

  “Pretty poetic, I think I’m with you. It’s like that radio show I used to listen to back in the early fifties. The announcer would come on and say: ‘who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Only the Shadow knows.’ You ever listen to that show?”

  Paul chimed in. “Believe it or not, I know that radio program. It’s a classic. We studied the old sound recordings of the show in theater at USC. Great stuff!” He paused and dropped his voice. “Daniel, finish your story about your buddy in Vietnam. What happened?”

  For a moment I thought Daniel wasn’t going to answer. Then he picked up the memory. “We stayed in that frigging muddy ditch for days, waiting for somebody to shoot at. Then when the enemy finally meandered our way out of the jungle, we charged with the rest of the platoon. He saluted me as we came up out of the mud. We ran like hell in the direction the lieutenant pointed, shooting off rounds at anything in our path. I remember rows and rows of green banana trees, at least I think they were bananas, mowed down by the gunfire. Then all around me our boys started dropping from overhead fire… snipers in the taller trees above. The sons-a-bitches had suckered us out in the open. Must have been like picking off fish in a barrel. We ran in all different directions trying to hide from the Cong shooters… lost sight of my friend in the bush. When it was over, the enemy disappeared back into the jungle. I was hit but too scared to do anything but hide. Most of us got airlifted out by the chopper pilots—they were the real heroes in Nam, you know. Didn’t see that Iowa boy again. I like to think they got him out, too. He was a good man, a sad man, but a good man.”

  “Oh, Daniel,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”

  Paul was quiet, head cocked to one side, thinking. After a few seconds he excused himself to the bathroom. Daniel came over to the window and stood beside me. “Promise, what are we really doing here?”

  I exhaled the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. How could I explain? “I know it doesn’t make much sense, Daniel, but it’s just something I have to do. I couldn’t turn away. I just couldn’t.” I listened to my voice, more a plea than an explanation, and took time to compose myself. “If you want to go on back home, please do. I wouldn’t think less of you. I admit I probably didn’t think through what I was getting us into.”

  He lowed his chin to make sure our eyes met and relaxed a hand on my arm. I could feel his mood change in his touch. He was back from Vietnam. “I didn’t say I wanted to bail on you. I wouldn’t do that. I just needed to be certain you had a good reason for being here. Cause I got to tell you, I’ve had more fun at a calf branding.”

  Off to my right, I sensed a shadow of movement in the yard and stepped back against the wall, pulling Daniel with me. “Don’t move,” I whispered, “I think I see someone coming towards the house.” He moved closer for a better look and we scanned open spaces between oaks and pines, straining to locate a human form in the cloud-masked darkness.

  “There,” Daniel whispered, his breath stirring my hair as he leaned against to my ear. “To the right. Moving out from the pines.”

  I saw a tall caped figure, hood drawn about the face, moving gracefully towards the house. “Good Lord, no wonder Paul thought he’d seen a ghost.” The specter disappeared around the right side of the house, heading straight towards the thorny trapdoor and the outside basement entrance.

  Paul appeared beside us at the window and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could make more than a guttural half-sound, Daniel was by his side and clasped his hand over his mouth. I could faintly hear him giving Paul directions to be quiet and still. In another reflexive move, Daniel eased Paul into one of the kitchen chairs and motioned for him to stay put. Paul nodded his understanding. Without a sound, Daniel removed his boots, and now in stocking feet he placed his boots on the counter, out of the way of either of us stumbling over them in the dark. Noiselessly, he sat down at the table, facing his laptop. It booted up, giving a spare greenish glow into the room. He must have worried the glow would be visible through the windows from the kitchen table’s angle, because he eased from his chair and positioned himself and the computer on the floor. If this was a war game, Daniel certainly knew more of the rules than I did, and he was much more mentally equipped for this sleuthing business than I was, since I was still standing gape-mouthed at the window looking at thin air. The realization hit me with a guilty pang that he was slopping through mud and blood in Vietnam trying to stay alive when I was in college worrying about bad-hair days. This was a good man, and I was happy he survived.

  Daniel snapped his fingers to get my attention. I came out of my shoes and tiptoed over to him. The laptop screen was silent; the dot blip lit up on the grid. Our caped intruder had taken the bait and was on the move. Oh, what a beautiful thing to watch. Silently, the dot moved across the screen just like a child’s etch-a-sketch game, except our grownup version had coordinates top and left to mark our dot’s location. Slowly and methodically, it moved right and then up the grid. Daniel’s arm pointed forcefully towards the window and I took his direction and eased back over to watch. The seconds ticked off in my mind as I wondered how long it could take for her to climb back over the wall, replace ladders to the floor, and sneak out the basement door into the night.

  And then where would she go? My guess was back across the half-ruined parapet to the other side of the creek. She probably had a vehicle parked on the street beyond the shallow woods of Howell Creek. Daniel snapped his fingers again to signal the dot was moving again; I strained my neck to peer around the window casing and tried to adjust to the darkness of the yard again. I don’t know how many seconds I counted before I thought I saw a shadow pass between two tall bushes and move away. Crap! Where did she go?

  My heart was thumping low in my chest, echoing in my ears. There was no sign of the shadowy figure. Paul crawled across the floor and pulled me down below the window level, whispering to me that Daniel was saying the tracer dot had stopped. It no longer moved on the screen. He thought it was maybe two hundred feet from us, but not getting any farther away. I jerked on my shoes, hurried across the room to Daniel and knelt beside him to whisper, “She must have crossed the creek by now. We’re going to lose her. Call Barnes and tell him to look for her and a vehicle on the street beyond the creek.”

  Daniel grabbed my arm to hold me back. “You’re not going out there?”

  “Think, Daniel. I have to. We don’t know where she went and you are the only one who can work the computer. Call Barnes. If for no other reason than to give me hell, he will meet me on the other side.”

  Paul stepped to my side and whispered anxiously, “What can I do?”

  “Keep watch at the window. She might be doubling back for some reason.”

  From the living room, I ran out the French doors onto a brick patio, then down three short steps into the yard leading to Howell Creek. As I left the cover of the side of the house, with its overgrown azaleas, and stepped out into a dimly moonlit expanse of grass, I looked back up at the kitchen window. The dark room silhouetted Paul’s outline, black against gray. That meant she could have seen me watching her.

  In a few fast steps I covered the narrow wet lawn and melted into the trees, following the sound of the rain-swollen creek. Once I located the parapet
I studied the far side of the creek for a waiting caped shadow. A creeping sensation at the base of my neck, like a spider scurrying into my hair, warned me I was somewhere I had no business being. Nevertheless, when I saw no one on the other side, I chanced a first step and began to cross the crumbling remains of the gristmill wall. From the shore it looked plenty wide for a person to walk across, and I guess it was, if it had been daylight and the stone not slowing eroding into Howell Creek, and if the person crossing the wall weren’t scared out of her wits.

  I made it almost to the other side before my left foot slipped off and mired calf deep in cold rushing water. Pain wracked my ankle as I felt the skin peel back from collision with rocks on the creek bed. Cursing myself for being so clumsy, I extracted my wet foot and limped the remainder of the distance across and onto the wet leaves of the bank. Sitting for a moment to assess the damage, I took off my shoe to empty it of water. It was just as I rose to my feet and turned into the woods that I felt the first of two excruciating blows: one catching my ribs on the right side, and another laterally across my right arm. The impact sent me back down on the ground with a pitiful groan. From where I half knelt on a muddy patch of bank, I heard rather than saw my attacker retreat into the woods. For one fleeting moment I questioned what I’d been hit with, and if I could even stand up. But stand up I did, and stumbled after the sound of fast footsteps slapping wet leaves. I knew I had to keep her location in sight before she made it out of the woods and escaped.

  I can’t cook rice without sticking it to the bottom of the pan, and Algebra totally eludes me; however, I am blessed with an excellent sense of where I am on this earth. You can drop me just about anywhere and I can sense north and south like I have a compass tattooed on the back of my eyelids. That’s why, even in the dark, surrounded by an unfamiliar woods, I could feel what direction to follow.

  What I couldn’t know was that my attacker must have heard me closing in behind and doubled back to my left. She struck me again, this time I think she meant to cripple me from the rear at the knees. Because I am shorter, closer to the ground than she judged, the blow caught me squarely across my butt; two inches higher and my back might have been broken. It felt like a thousand wasp stings and reverberated all the way up my spine.

  When she poised to hit me again, I saw her out of the corner of my eye and recognized the weapon: the single piece of iron rebar from Paul’s basement. I lunged up towards her, flailing my fists at her chest and hitting at anything I could reach. My prissy attempt at self-defense must have taken her off guard because she dropped the iron bar and ran, leaving me panting with pain in a heap on the ground, and clutching a handful of hair.

  I held my prize out to the meager moonlight and realized what I had in my hand was a wig, an artful creation of long black cornrows laced with multi-colored beads. Only the pain kept me from laughing. Angel the elegant, in a wig. I couldn’t wait to tell Susan.

  I was tentatively standing and shaking out the tail of my soggy linen skirt where it clung to my equally soggy and muddy legs when a light shone in my eyes. A familiar voice spoke from the other side of the light. “Alpha to Beta. I got her. Over. Gotcha. Good job boys. Over and out.” Of course RB Barnes would be Alpha on his two-way radio, and everybody else’s moniker would be farther down the alphabet line. I did my best to get upright and look professional. If one can look professional in muddy clothes, wet shoes, and possibly broken ribs. My knees felt like jelly and every time I took a breath it felt like a knife ripping into my side. I was in serious danger of crying, and would have if my rescuer had been anyone other than my ex-husband.

  “Gawd-a-mighty, Promise. I should have known,” he scolded. “What the hell are you doing out here? Not snipe hunting are you? You look like a mud rat.” I have no idea what a mud rat is, but I’m sure it is not the least bit attractive. He scanned the light over the rest of my body, then hooked it to his belt clip and extended his left hand to help me. His handgun remained in his right hand.

  “Am I under arrest?” I asked, pulling away from him.

  “For cripes sake, Promise,” he snapped, “Stop trying to have the last word and just let me help you. I didn’t realize you were hurt.” He spoke into his radio again. “Beta, this is Alpha. We are going to need an EMT at start point. Copy? “The reply was “yes sir” and he signed off.

  “How did you get here so fast?”

  “Cause I’m smart, Dr. McNeal. I was watching Tournay’s house because I talked to Garland Wang earlier. We both figured you were up to something.”

  “How astute of you,” I replied. “What’s start point?”

  “Start point is Tournay’s house. There are two other units parked on the side street beyond the woods. They picked up your perp, just where the cowboy at Tournay’s house told us she’d be.”

  “Cowboy?” Barnes was apparently talking about Daniel. “Just shut up Barnes. You wouldn’t know a cowboy from a carhop.”

  “Promise, that’s the second time today you’ve told me to shut up. That’s more times than all the years we were married. What’s stiffened your back bone all the sudden?”

  Before I could think of a smart answer, two flashlight orbs came towards us from deeper into the woods. Barnes went back to business. “Were you hit with a weapon, or just knocked around on the ground?”

  I stumbled over and leaned against an oak for support. “Weapon. I think a piece of iron rebar between two and three feet long. She may have dropped it near where I fell.”

  “Les, that you?” Barnes called out to one of the lights.

  “Yes, Sir. Me and Boyle,” came the answer.

  “Look around the immediate perimeter here for an iron rod big enough to lay somebody out with. May be our weapon.”

  “Already got it, sir.” Les or Boyle, whoever he was, approached Barnes and held out the iron bar, partially wrapped in his handkerchief. I assumed that was to preserve fingerprints.

  Barnes shined his light on the bar then looked to me. “That look like the one?”

  I was holding onto the tree for dear life by this time and praying the nausea waving up into my throat didn’t mean I was going to throw up. All I could manage was a barely audible, “yes.” Then I remembered the wig I’d dropped somewhere between trying to stand under my own strength and Barnes’ arrival on the scene. “Randall,” I said weakly, “wave your light back and forth. I grabbed her wig when she hit me the last time.”

  “Did you say wig?” Barnes asked me. The other officer snickered. “What the hell is so funny, Les?”

  Less reached down into a dark space between his left foot and the Oak tree and picked up the damp wig. “Nothing, Boss. Nothing.” Producing a large plastic baggie from his jacket pocket, he slipped Angel’s wig inside. On Barnes’ signal, we headed back through the woods for Tournay’s house: me limping along in squishy wet shoes and Les continuing to snicker with his own private joke

  Daniel and Paul were waiting in the yard as we crossed the creek. Daniel reached for me as I stumbled off the parapet. “Promise, what happened? You’re shivering. Are you hurt?” He reached out and drew me to him, closing an arm around my shoulder.

  I let him, glad for the support and warmth. He was right. By that time I was cold and shaking. “I’ll be okay. I’m pretty sure nothing is broken. I’m just too old to wrestle a six foot tall woman half my age.”

  Les snickered again. “Les, you got way too much happy juice going on out here tonight,” reprimanded Barnes. “Now what’s so funny?”

  “Well, Boss. It’s like this,” Les began, pleased with himself, “we had a female officer with us, just like you said to, and when she patted the perp down, she says she ain’t a she. The officer says she’s pretty sure Ms. Angel Turner is a guy.”

  My mouth dropped about a foot and I looked at Paul. Both hands went on his hips and he turned away from us with a dramatic jerk. “Well, if that is supposed to make me feel better, it certainly does not!” We watched his back retreat towards the house.

&nb
sp; Barnes looked at me. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  I shook my head. “Long story, Randall, long story.”

  After the EMT took my vital signs, examined the red welts which I knew would soon darken to black and blue, and asked a few pertinent questions about how bad I hurt and whether my breathing was constricted by the blows across my ribs, I elected not to ride with them to the emergency room and signed the proper release forms to waive any damages should I croak later on due to my injuries. It seemed fair enough. There was no way I wanted to spend the rest of the night parked in the crowded halls of Grady Hospital waiting for an overworked doctor to tell the what I already knew: I’d be sore and bruised for a while, but I would live.

  After that I had to try and sit still long enough to give my statement to one of Barnes’ cohorts. It seemed he asked me the same questions over and over. I couldn’t tell if he thought I was lying, or if he had an attention deficit disorder. Finally, he closed his notebook and I had an opportunity to ask questions: like where was the Madonna alter piece Daniel and I had bugged with his tracking thingamabob, and had Angel’s identity been verified. To the first question, I was told the Madonna panels were indeed seized from Turner as she emerged from the woods; however, no tracking receiver was found on the panels. Evidently, the receiver, a thin metal disc about the size of a watch battery, fell off soon after Angel left the basement. That’s probably why the blips stopped and our cute little dot ceased to move up the grid. So much for the testimonials printed in bold type on the Great Gonzo Mondo Glue package.

  As to Angel Turner, the officer said they found her van parked on the grass shoulder of the street beyond the woods. Inside the glove box was a South Carolina driver’s license with the name Raymond Angelo Turner on it. Though the picture looked somewhat like Angel, she denied it was hers and said she had no idea why the license was in her van. When the officer ran the plates through the DMV, the van was registered to a Solomon B. Turner. Angel had no other driver’s license and refused to answer any further questions until an attorney was present.