Lady Midnight

by Timothy C. Phillips

  Now they would have to find her killer, or at least try. She had a single identifying mark, revealed when the evidence technicians rolled her body over, a tattoo on her left shoulder blade that read “Dixie.” Crossed above it was a tiny confederate flag on a pole and a red rose. Her long blonde hair was the color of straw, and bits of leaves and other unclean things clung within its tresses. Her open eyes were like dull blue oysters.

  “Country girl,” mused Cassandra.

  “Maybe she used to be.” Broom pointed an index finger that was the size of a roll of quarters at the inside of the dead girl’s arm. “See those needle marks? It’s been a while since she was down on the farm.”

  “Poor kid, she can’t be twenty-five. What a shame.” Cassandra shook her head.

  I said nothing. I was remembering another dead girl with needle marks on her arms. She hadn’t quite been twenty-five, either. But I tried to put that thought away.

  Broom turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, Roland, I know this is tough. Let’s see if she’s your girl.”

  They gently turned her over. She hadn’t been in the water long. Her friends and family, if she had any, would still easily recognize her. The old anger crawled up in my gut again when I saw the look that was frozen on her face, a frightened, lost look. I had seen that same lost look on the face of someone I’d cared for, someone who had died with a needle in her arm.

  Lena.

  Lena Walker was the name of a girl who’d been lost, and I had found, who was sinking slowly in the muck she had made of her life. I had thought that I could save her, but I had been wrong. I looked at this dead girl, now, and saw many of Lena’s mistakes, written in the telltale signs of her own slow decline.

  The red anger that welled up in my heart, in part came from the fact someone hadn’t even tried to help this girl. Instead, they had allowed her to slowly die in this hard and dirty way, and threw what was left of her away, like so much rubbish. I suddenly wanted very badly to find the ones responsible, and make them sorry for what they had done.

  Not your case, my eternally nagging inner voice told me. This one’s Broom’s. He’ll handle it. Let her go.

  I heaved a heavy sigh. “Thanks, Les. But she’s not the one. They look enough alike to be sisters, but it isn’t her.”

  All the little parts of the last forty-eight hours swirled like a tempest in my head: Baucom and the dead man, Bowman, who looked like two peas from the same pod; Senator Patrick’s reckless daughter, slumming somewhere in Atlanta where Bowman had lived and worked; and Bowman, who ended up in front of Sally’s Diner, just in time for me to watch him die.

  I had watched him die across the street from Sally’s Diner, where Baucom sat patiently waiting to talk to me about meeting Mr. Washington. If Lester Broom didn’t like coincidences, I downright despised them. Questions were already piling up, way too quickly. What I wanted was answers. If Bowman had somehow been involved in Patrick’s daughter’s disappearance, maybe he was waiting to talk to me, or perhaps even to Baucom.

  I had no facts, and was merely speculating. Whatever Bowman had known died with him. Something told me he was mixed up in the case, though. Since I was heading over to Atlanta, anyway, I reasoned that I might as well pay a visit to Bowman’s partner, and find out what he knew.

  Chapter 6

  The drive to Atlanta is a very green one, along the Interstate that winds the hundred and fifty odd miles from one Southern metropolis to the other. Then suddenly, Atlanta looms ahead, a vast city lost in a wilderness. Traffic goes from laid back to horrendous in a hurry, here in the city that houses the world’s busiest airport. The green gives way to gray, and the quiet of the country that accompanies you on the drive over vanishes abruptly and completely amid the engines of the cars of hundreds of thousands of motorists, the roar of jet engines, the rushing pace that is everywhere.

  Atlanta is like a girl who is too booked up to ever meet you somewhere quiet for lunch or drinks. You have to see her on the fly; your talks with her are always of the superficial kind, the kind you have with someone on the cell phone while they are negotiating rush hour traffic or power shopping in the mall. In the end, you come to realize that you’ll never get to know her very well, no matter how much you like her. It’s best to move on before you get too attached.

  The truth is, maybe there’s nothing much beneath the surface and the bluster to get to know. It was all freeze dried, packed away, and shipped off somewhere else a long time ago. There is a lot in Atlanta to look at, but there is nothing to feel. Move along, everyone’s glare seems to shout out to you. What’s the matter with you, aren’t you as busy as the rest of us?

  My cell phone rang. I was just beginning to mentally berate Senator Patrick for being a micro manager, when a glance at the screen revealed that it was Detective Lester Broom calling again.

  “Hi, Les.”

  “Roland, what’s shaking?”

  “I’m over in Atlanta following up on that missing girl case.”

  “Any luck?”

  “I’m really just getting started; I’m driving into Atlanta right now.”

  “Well, I thought I’d let you know that I got a call from the partner of that dead private eye, Bowman. Fellow name of Grant.”

  This was timely news, indeed. “Did he have any idea why Bowman was hanging around Brooks Plaza that day?”

  “He said he didn’t.”

  “What did he say when you told him that another private eye was watching while his partner got killed?”

  “This is an ongoing investigation, so I didn’t share that information with him. If you got it in your head to do some snooping, I thought you might want to preserve the element of surprise.”

  “I appreciate that. I was wondering why the guy was there, who wanted him dead. I might ask Grant that, if I get a chance.”

  I suddenly felt a strange impulse, as if everything in the last few days was connected. I thought of the similarity in the appearances of Connie Patrick and the dead girl in the river. Almost before I realized that I was going to, I said, “Les, that girl in the Cahaba River. Did you find out her name?”

  “The girl? No, Cassandra and I have been really beating the bushes on that one. We must have shown her picture to every pimp, prostitute, junkie and pusher in the county, but so far, nothing.”

  “Don’t give up on her.”

  “You know better that that, old friend. She’s somebody to somebody. We’ll find out her details, eventually.”

  “All right, Les. If I find out anything on the Bowman angle, I’ll give you a shout back.”

  “Thanks, Roland. I hope you find the girl safe.”

  I hung up and pointed my Buick back out into the rush hour hell of afternoon Atlanta. Sometimes I wanted to laugh at the futility of what Broom and I, and the men and women like us do every day, trying to find people lost in so much chaos, trying to reach down to those who willingly plunge into the abyss, and pull them back to safety and sanity. Sometimes, I really wonder just what in the hell I am trying to prove, and to whom. But then, as always, I take a deep breath and get back into the ring, because I am Roland Longville, a private detective, and that is all I really know how to do.

  * * *

  The offices of Bowman and Grant were located in the New South Bank Building, a cool, marble and glass, post-modern structure in downtown Atlanta. I figured the rent was about a billion dollars a month. I had decided to drop in on Grant unannounced. If you tell people you’re coming, and tell them why, they have a habit of thinking up lies to tell you before you get there, if lying is their plan.

  Questions out of the blue often get the straight dope out of people a lot more efficiently. Of course Grant had talked with Broom and other detectives, but he couldn’t be expecting me to show up at his office. Luckily, Broom had kept mum on the fact that I had witnessed Bowman’s death.

  The world’s most silent elevator whisked me effortlessly to the twenty-third floor, and the doors opened onto a corridor tha
t was sterile, silent and serene. Neat plants and subtle agreeable smells guided me down the hall to a mahogany door with a tastefully etched brass plate. The plate discreetly notified me that I had reached the offices of Bowman and Grant, Security Consultants and Private Detectives, Inc.

  I went in without knocking. There was a receptionist behind a desk. She was a smart-looking young white woman, with dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was lean and fit-looking beneath a cobalt-gray jacket, crisp white shirt, and short black skirt that revealed attractive, muscular legs, when she came around the desk and greeted me with a polite smile.

  A tiny wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows as she looked me over. I am a big black man with a scar on my face. My appearance here seemed to require an explanation, the wrinkle seemed to say. I am used to the look, but it still makes me testy.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Yes. My name is Roland Longville. I’m a private investigator, here to see Mr. Grant.”

  “Oh, of course. One moment, please.” My explanation had been accepted.

  Although there was a phone on her desk, she disappeared with the staccato rap of expensive heels to the rear of the suite, to confer with Mr. Grant before allowing me entry. She came back after a minute with little brown commas of her eyebrows raised.

  “Mr. Grant will see you, Mr. Longville. Right this way.”

  She turned away, and I followed, I watched her ankle expertly down the hallway and listened to the tick-tock tapping of her razor sharp heels. When she approached a mahogany door, studiously adorned with another tasteful brass plate, she informed me that I was entering the inner sanctum of no less a personage that Private Investigator Paul Grant.

  Grant met me at the door. “Roland Longville. It is indeed a pleasure to meet you in person. I’ve quite a bit of professional admiration for you.”

  “What can I say; I’ve had my picture in the paper a few times.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Oliver,” Grant said by way of dismissal, and the young woman left us.

  Grant was a man in his late forties, with a full head of salt and pepper hair. He had a handsome face, a cleft in his chin, and soft, intelligent gray eyes. He also had a resonant voice, and he was wearing an impeccably tailored blue suit with a silver-gray tie. He reminded me of Bob Barker, from “The Price is Right.” All in all, he looked and sounded more like a top-notch lawyer than someone in my line of work. Or someone who played one on a daytime television show. Maybe that’s how they do it in Atlanta, I thought.

  “So, Mr. Longville, what brings you to our fair city?”

  “Mr. Grant, I came to ask you a few questions about the murder of your partner.”

  “Artie.” Grant’s demeanor changed. The soft eyes became sullen, and the ebullient voice dropped to a murmur. It all seemed a little studied, like an act, but maybe that was the way Grant operated, I thought to myself. Some people just don’t come across as sincere.

  “Come again?”

  “Arthur Bowman. Artie. He was my partner in business, Mr. Longville, but he was also my friend. He was best man at my wedding. His death hit me pretty hard.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, though I was unable to detect any signs of real bereavement in the cool character Grant presented. “Can you think of any reason someone wanted him dead?”

  “Not that I can think of. I’ve gone over his files. Artie and I both worked multiple cases, so I took a look, thinking something might be there that would give me an answer. But there was nothing.” He was giving me a repeat of what Broom had already gotten from him. Grant had already settled on what details he was going to reveal, it seemed. Maybe he was, after all, investigating his friend’s death, himself.

  “Can you tell me what type of case Bowman was working on?” I ventured.

  “I wouldn’t want to reveal any details.”

  “Of course I understand. I’m not asking you to reveal anything sensitive. You see, I think Bowman—Artie’s— death might somehow be tied to a case I’m working on. Just how, I’m not sure, but I have a feeling there’s a tie-in.”

  Grant seemed to weigh the gravity of revealing sensitive details against what he apparently knew about my reputation, until his face softened and he gave me the nod I was hoping for.

  “Okay. If it will help us get closer to who might have done this to Artie, I’ll bite. Artie was working on two cases, Mr. Longville. Neither of them had anything to do with Birmingham, however, as far as I can figure. Without getting into specifics, one was a dead-beat dad case. The court had judged against an absentee father, and instead of paying, the guy had skipped out and was living somewhere in the Carolinas, working for cash, so his wages couldn’t get garnished. I’m sure you’ve worked cases like that one.”

  I nodded. “Plenty of them.”

  “Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. The other was more of the same, I’m afraid. He was working a case in which a person was concerned about a sibling’s welfare. I think there had been a history of drug abuse, rehab, that sort of thing. The one party basically wanted Artie to check on the welfare of the other, you know, go over to the person’s house and make sure that they were staying off the drugs, without getting the police involved.” Grant smiled a grim little smile. “I’m sure that sort of case sounds familiar enough to you, as well.”

  I nodded again. “I know the tune.”

  “As you can see, though, Mr. Longville, neither of these cases are anything but the most mundane type work we get in our strange little profession. These were both, quite literally, cases that Artie should have been wrapping up. The one entailed no more than a drive up the coast, and the other no more than a drive across town. So I really have no idea at all what business he was pursuing in Birmingham. It really is a mystery, if you’ll excuse the expression.”

  “Do you and Grant usually keep your cases secret from one another?” I asked.

  Grant’s smile was a little less friendly now. I was fishing for something and he plainly knew it. “Mr. Longville, I know that you work alone. Many private detectives do. I worked without a partner for several years, myself. I’ve worked for other firms in which there were many partners. But as you doubtlessly know, unless we are working on a case together, there is absolutely no reason for one partner in a firm to share the details of his case with the other. Why, it wouldn’t be ethical, now would it?”

  I shrugged. “So, no strange calls in the last few days? Messages, anything out of the ordinary?”

  Grant shook his head. “None. I can absolutely assure you of that. Jeanette—that is, Ms. Oliver—is meticulous to a fault when it comes to managing this office, and that includes messages. There was no e-mail, no voice mail, no incoming office mail of any kind that offered any explanation for why Artie had gone to Birmingham. To be honest with you, I’ve wracked my brain about it, and I’ve come up with nothing.”

  I drew a deep breath and stood. I put out my hand. “Well, then, Mr. Grant, thank you kindly. I’ll take up no more of your time.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Grant shook my hand firmly. Here was a man who knew how to shake hands. “It was really a pleasure to meet you, and please let me know if you find anything out.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said solemnly as Grant walked me out past the desk where Ms. Oliver sat. She smiled wanly and nodded to me agreeably as the two of us walked toward the door to the suite.

  As the door closed quietly behind me, I turned and read the plaque again. Grant, Security Consultants and Private Detectives, Inc. A most impressive operation, I mused, and Mr. Grant was a most impressive man. He was an especially good liar, I decided, but he wasn’t the best I had ever seen. Grant knew damned well why Bowman had been in Birmingham that day, and I was willing to bet any sum of money that he was in his office right now, trying to exercise some damage control. Which was precisely what I wanted him to do.

  If I was to get to the bottom of Bowman’s death, I was going to have to let the players know that I was in the game. I didn’t know if Grant had
been involved in his partner’s death, but I was fairly certain that the man had some idea who was responsible. Maybe he was in danger from the same people. For some reason, he didn’t want anyone to know, including me.

  There is nothing to do, once one has shaken the tree, but wait and see what falls out of it.

  Chapter 7

  Anthony Herron made his living playing in bands that specialized in performing in clubs that catered to the college and post-college crowd. In Atlanta, bands like that played around an area called Little Five Points. I decided to see if I could catch his scent there. I headed over to that part of town and drove around until I found a street with nightclubs lining either side.

  I got out and walked along the street. The telephone poles were covered with multicolored fliers advertising bands and beer specials. Generations of rusty nails dating back to my own college days, and possibly even earlier, covered the surface of every wooden pole in sight, testifying to quite an active music culture in the area. I didn’t see any fliers that featured a band called No Luck. I finally decided that a casual canvas of the area wasn’t going to get me very far, and that I should take a different approach.

  I asked around a few places that were just opening, but had no luck in any of them. If I wanted to find out about area bands, a young man in a Ramones T-Shirt told me, I needed to try Euclid Avenue, a couple of blocks over. “The Block,” the young man told me, was where the real music scene was happening. I thanked him and made my way over to Euclid, where the young man’s thousand brothers and sisters, all similarly attired, were gearing up for the evening. Young people in the costumes of three generations made up a mob of people, all trying to be different, and ending up all looking pretty much like one another. Nonetheless, they were all trying their hand at being cool.

  Post-post punks and grown-up Emo kids shared the sidewalk with the grandsons of Grunge, all trying to convince themselves by their multiple tattoos and piercings that they were doing something different, something original. They no doubt thought themselves somehow cooler than all those who had come before them, and those who would come after them. Mostly, though, they had drinking and dancing on their minds, and that’s why the bars stayed open here, no matter what music was currently in vogue.