Blood Brother

by J. A. Kerley

  “Old Saint Pat’s, northwest of you. Can you grab a cab? There’ll be cabs on Houston, north of Prince.”

  I saw a flow of headlights and taillights a block away. “I see the traffic. Could you tell me what this is –”

  “Hustle, please. Here’s the address …”

  Folger answered my shave-and-a-haircut knock dressed in exercise shorts and a filmy sleeveless top. Brown leather moccasins on her feet. There was a nine millimeter semi-auto in her hand, aimed at the floor.

  “You always arm yourself for company?” I said.

  She put her hand on my back to usher me into the living room, then leaned out the door, her eyes scanning the street in both directions before ducking inside.

  “I saw a face at the window. Someone was looking inside. When I checked, no one was there. But look …”

  She set the nine down and picked up a high-intensity flashlight from a small table. She opened the door and steadied the beam on the deadbolt. I scoped out the left keyhole, saw scratches cut through the faux-antique finish.

  “Lock pick, you think?” she asked. “Sure looks like it to me.”

  I slid my fingernail over the scratches. Fairly deep, considering the hardness of the finish. “What were you doing when it happened?” I asked.

  “Checking the weather before taking a shower and tottering off to beddy-bye. I’ve been tracking an ENSO and it’s –”

  “ENSO?”

  “El Nino-Southern Oscillation episode, a disruption of normal tropical precipitation that …” She caught herself, shifted back to the problem at hand. “I had the Weather Channel on. When I shut down the computer and turned off the TV, I heard the scratches. I heard someone yell, ‘Hey you! I see you!’ A deep, hard voice. Scary. I went for my weapon, crept low toward the windows. Looked out and saw nothing. It took thirty, forty seconds for me to get from the desk to the door.”

  “You see who called out?”

  “No. A guy with a big voice. Probably saw someone at the door, yelled. Didn’t want to hang around and get involved. Good for him, anyway.”

  “Why didn’t you call your people? Bullard. Cluff. Anyone. You’ve got the whole NYPD at your beck and call.” I paused, had one of those cartoon-lightbulb-over-the-head moments, smiled gently. “You didn’t want to seem upset in front of your people, so you called the Mobile Police.”

  “No …I mean, yes. It would have been embarrassing. There’s been strangeness happening for a couple of weeks.” Her eyes studied mine. “You’ve got the sense, right? The tingle when things aren’t what they seem?”

  “The cop sense? I have my share.”

  The cop sense is when you know things by the feel of the air. Or a shiver in the spine. Or a twitching in the gut that says something’s off. Harry hears a distant siren in his head.

  Folger’s long bare legs scissored across the room to the window. She was dressed for lazing around the house, braless, her tidy breasts bobbing beneath the thin fabric. She studied the street, turned to me.

  “I’ve had a screwy feeling. Like I’m being watched.”

  “Found anything to back it up?”

  “I saw a parked car someone might be watching from, but it zoomed off. I feel eyes. But when I turn my head, nothing.” Folger spun a finger at her temple. “Maybe I should run you back to your hotel before they lock me in the loony bin.”

  “You never saw anyone?”

  “Just shadows. A few days back I was running in the park and the feeling was strong as it gets. I lost my cool and acted like an idiot. When I spun and saw a big guy jump behind some bushes, I ran over and dragged him out.”

  “What happened?”

  “Guy had a terrified look on his face and a leash in his hand. His mutt had jumped at a cat, broke the leash clip. The poor bastard was trying to find his dog.” She hung her head. “I’m not kidding, Ryder. Maybe I am going nuts.”

  “Thinking you’re going crazy is the best protection against going crazy. You recently have a tough breakup with a significant other?”

  She pushed a loose lock of dark hair behind an ear and laughed without humor. “I vaguely recall dating. Isn’t there a movie involved? Dinner?”

  “You piss off anyone in the line of duty?”

  “Almost daily. Perps and colleagues both. But I racked my mind on perps and ruled it out. That leaves going bonkers.”

  She sat on the couch heavily, dropped her chin in her hands, sighed. I sat beside her, on my own separate couch cushion. As per Old South tradition, one could have fitted a Bible between our respective thighs, making it proper. A stack of holy tomes, however, would have done nothing to blunt the scent of her perfume as it mingled with the scent of her fear, an olfactory cannonball that blasted me into dizziness. I turned my eyes from her hands, her thighs, her lap, spoke to the far wall.

  “Shelly tells me you’re very smart and intuitive. I think you’d know whether or not you’re being followed.”

  “That’s sweet of Waltz. I think he’s amazing. I just wish he seemed happier.”

  I told her Koslowski’s story about how a laughing Waltz used to brighten a bar by walking through the door.

  “What made him so unhappy?”

  “Koslowski didn’t know, just that the Waltz of long ago was a lot happier than the Waltz of today.”

  She put her feet up on the coffee table, shifted her body an inch my way. “I guess everyone has secrets,” she said. “Even Shelly Waltz. Speaking of secrets, I don’t expect to hear anyone talking about my weather obsession. Thanks in advance.”

  “You just lost me,” I said.

  “After you left this afternoon, I realized how goofy it must have seemed – me chattering about frontal systems, getting lost in the weather. I figured you’d tell people on the force. Like, ‘Hey, guys, you won’t believe what Folger does at home. She’s queer for clouds.’ Then I realized you’re not like that. I misjudged you and I apologize.”

  “You didn’t know me. And love of weather isn’t an obsession, Alice. It’s cool.”

  She tipped my way another inch or so. “You really, truly don’t think it’s weird?”

  I picked up her hand, held it between mine. “You’re fascinated by the science of climatology. Weather’s everywhere.”

  She looked at our hands. Her body tipped closer until our shoulders touched and I felt her warmth, smelled the wild spices of her body. Her lips softened. “Whoops. Here’s honest-to-gosh proof I’m weirding out.”

  “What’s that?” I whispered.

  Her lips parted and moved toward mine.

  Jeremy Ridgecliff leaned forward and tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder.

  “We can go now, Ludis. I think it’s time for a repast.”

  “Re-what?”

  “I’m hungry. I’m so very hungry lately.”

  “YOU SEE WHAT YOU WANT HERE AGAIN? FOR YOUR MOVIE?”

  “I think some pivotal scenes will be shot here. Take me to a restaurant. Italian. Candlelight.”

  “We drive in LITTLE ITALY! Look in restaurant windows for candles, how that work? Maybe see PRETTY GIRLS. I know you LOVE looking at the girls.”

  Ridgecliff studied the streets, shops, houses, entranced at what was there for the seeing.

  “Beauty, Ludis. There’s so much of it out here.”

  “WHAT YOU MEAN? Out here where?”

  “On this side of the wall. No, don’t ask. Find me some candles.”

  As the cab pulled from the curb, Jeremy Ridgecliff took a final glance at the brownstone with the lovely window boxes. His stomach growled, and he laughed.

  TWENTY

  Seven a.m. found me sitting at Alice Folger’s kitchen table, coffee perking merrily. I heard a throat cleared, turned. She was in the doorway wrapped in a thick terry robe, white, her face a cross between apology and embarrassment. A sincere but strained look. She might have also attempted cheery bravado, another common mask for a morning meeting with someone you’ve had an unplanned night with, a night where conversation
was often monosyllabic.

  I held up my hand like a Hollywood Indian. Instead of How, I said, “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t apologize or be embarrassed or do or say anything that isn’t perfectly you, which is perfectly magical.” I pointed to the coffee pot. “You ready for some brew, Weather Lady?”

  Embarrassment turned into a smile, the smile turning wry, escalating to a grin. She shook the robe from her shoulders to the floor.

  “Eventually.”

  We reconvened at the kitchen table a half-hour later. She toasted bagels and set out cream cheese and lox, and we ate like confirmed Manhattanites. She licked pink lox from a matching thumb.

  “We probably shouldn’t walk into the station together this morning. Wagging tongues and all that.”

  “I’m hitting the hotel for a change and a shower. I’ve been thinking about Ridgecliff, want to run some more ideas past y’all today.”

  “You seemed like you made a breakthrough or something yesterday, like information about Ridgecliff was pouring into your head.”

  I looked away. “It’s the way it felt.”

  “Keep that faucet turned on,” she said, kissing my forehead.

  The sun was fresh to the blue eastern sky as Harry Nautilus pulled into the white sand drive of Evangeline Prowse’s cabin. He had been an idiot yesterday, letting Jeremy Ridgecliff’s photo stun him into stumbling from her cottage without taking the photo. Carson would want to see the thing. And the picture wasn’t the sort of item to be left for anyone to find.

  Maybe the Doc had some kind of strange relationship with Ridgecliff, but after twenty-plus years as a cop, Nautilus realized when it came to vagaries of the heart, anything was possible.

  When he entered Prowse’s cottage the place felt more haunted than yesterday, something jingling Nautilus’s alarm system. He opened a closet by the front door to see a shiny, store-bought sign saying, DO NOT DISTURB, red letters over black. Helen Pappagallos had for-sure seen a sign.

  He tossed it back into the closet and went to the office, rolling up the Ridgecliff photo. Something continued to register on his alert system, faint, like the pulsing of a distant siren.

  Nautilus checked out the window behind Prowse’s desk. He turned to see a red light blinking on her answering machine. Blip, blip, blip. The message was setting off his alarm; he didn’t know how these signals worked, was glad they did.

  Nautilus sat in Prowse’s chair – comfortable, a Herman Miller – and pressed the Play button. The phone beeped and dated the phone call as having arrived last night at eight. A voice appeared in the air.

  “Doctor Prowse, this is John Wyatt. It’s been a few months and I was wondering if you found everything you needed in the files I sent. I guess I’m also wondering if you’re working on something related and interesting. Hell, everything you do is interesting, at least to folks like me. Anyway, keep me cued in and if you need anything else, just give me a yell.”

  An interesting message. Nautilus dialed back.

  “FBI …” an assured female voice said. “Behavioral Sciences Division.”

  “This is Detective Harry Nautilus with the Mobile Police Department. I’m returning John Wyatt’s call.”

  “One moment please.”

  The phone picked up seconds later. “This is John Wyatt, Detective Nautilus. I don’t recollect calling you.”

  “You didn’t. I’m returning the call you made to Dr Evangeline Prowse. I’m in her office and just found your message. I’m very sorry to have to tell you that Dr Prowse is dead.”

  A three-beat pause as the information was absorbed, contemplated, accepted.

  “My God. What happened?”

  “She was murdered in New York six days ago. No one’s sure why, but there’s a suspect in mind. I’m looking into things on the Southern end and found your phone message. Might I ask what you sent the Doctor?”

  Wyatt sounded rattled. “Let me get my head back. What a tragedy …she was a great lady, brilliant. Uh, let’s see if I can give you a chronology. Dr Prowse called me about a month back and asked for information on the DC snipers. You know of the pair, of course.”

  “John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. Killed ten people back in 2002. At random.”

  Nautilus saw a mind-picture of the fortyish, good-looking Muhammad with his arm around the much younger Malvo, a bright grin on the kid’s face, like he’s about to float away into Joyland.

  Wyatt said, “Doctor Prowse wanted everything the Bureau had on the pair, especially psychological work-ups and personal histories – how they met, ages at the time of meeting, relationship with one another …”

  Nautilus one-handedly slipped a notepad from the pocket of his lime-green jacket, began taking notes.

  “Just Muhammad and Malvo?” he asked.

  “Yep. Oh, and she wanted the information ASAP.”

  “That was unusual?”

  “Very. Dr Prowse generally needed Bureau info for a scholarly article or a presentation at a symposium, that kind of thing. It was always ‘Send it when you find a spare moment.’ But she wanted me to send the DC snipers material as fast as I put it all together.”

  “Which you did.”

  “Anything Dr Prowse wanted, she got. She came as close to understanding psychopathic minds as anyone I’ve ever known; an empath.”

  “She say why she was so interested in the pair?”

  “I took it she was studying the hold John Muhammad had over Malvo. How it got started, how strong the hold was. She did mention something about ‘looking into someone’s past’. I thought she was referring to one of the snipers, but in retrospect, maybe not.”

  Nautilus wrote looking into someone’s past in his notepad, paused, underscored someone’s.

  “The kid, Malvo, was what age at the time of the shooting rampage – sixteen?”

  “Seventeen,” Wyatt said. “Muhammad was forty-two. An ex-Marine with the highest classification in marksmanship. He passed the sniper skills on to Malvo.” Wyatt sighed. “My father taught me to hunt rabbits.”

  “The kid take to the skills willingly, or was there coercion?”

  “Willingly. But Lee Malvo was under a bad star from the git-go, lived poor in Jamaica, no steady male influence in his childhood. His mother abandoned him regularly. Muhammad befriended Malvo’s mother, stayed with Mommy and son a while in Antigua. Muhammad probably seemed a stable influence in the kid’s life. An authority figure.”

  “A drifting kid finds an anchor,” Nautilus said.

  “Fast-forward a decade to Bellingham, Washington. Muhammad enrolls Malvo in high school, telling everyone he’s the kid’s biological father.”

  “Muhammad’s closing the deal.”

  “The little lost boy finally has a daddy, big and strong and protective. I figure Lee Malvo was so desperate for a father he would have let Charles Manson put him on a leash and walk him on hands and knees over broken glass, as long as he could call Manson ‘Papa’.”

  “Unfortunately, Daddy’s a psychopath.”

  “A big drawback. When Muhammad and Malvo got caught, they were planning to murder a cop, plant an IED at the funeral, make more corpses. The ultimate plan was to blackmail the government – they’d stop the carnage for ten million dollars.”

  “Incredible.”

  “Here’s the post script, Detective. They planned to use part of the money to find and recruit other emotionally devastated young boys. Muhammad hoped to train them, set them loose across the US.”

  “Murder missions,” Nautilus whispered.

  “You got it, Detective. A cadre of robot sons killing to please Daddy.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Alice dropped me at the hotel on the way to work. I went upstairs, showered, put on a fresh new shirt and pants.

  Recalling that I hadn’t talked to my favorite boss in a couple days, I called and gave Tom Mason a broad overview of events, pledging to return as soon as possible. Though my absence left Tom a slo
t short in his roster, he seemed proud one of his cops had been called to New York to work a case. Or maybe me being gone made his life easier. I was about to ring off when I recalled the PSIT cases Tom had sent Waltz, making Folger decide maybe I was a pretty decent detective, even if I wasn’t NYPD.

  “Hey, Tom, thanks for sending the case outlines to Detective Waltz.”

  “Wasn’t nothing. He said you’d mentioned the hundred per cent solve rate and he wanted to pass details to some lady lieutenant looking to break your whatevers.”

  “My whatevers are fine, Tom. The Lieutenant and I are seeing eye to eye now.”

  Tom sighed. “Yankees.”

  “You know they actually named a baseball team that?”

  “Go figure.”

  “What’d you think of Shelly Waltz?” I asked.

  “He seemed a gentleman. Interested in how you got on the force, made detective. Real impressed with your history here in Mobile. Even wanted to know a bit about your upbringing.”

  My internal ears pricked up, hearing the alarm that sounds whenever my past is a topic.

  “Upbringing?”

  “Where you grew up, family ties, that sort of thing. You kind of moved around as a kid, right? No daddy, your mama an army nurse? I couldn’t really remember.”

  Because I suggested a false story of my past once, Tom. Then never mentioned it again, wanting only the impression to remain.

  I faked a yawn. “Not a whole lot to tell.”

  “No close relatives, anything like that?”

  “Hmmp? Shelly ask that, too?”

  I heard Tom sip from the coffee mug ever-present in his hand. He yelled something across the room, listened to the response, came back on the line.

  “Just family stuff. You from a big family, little family? Tight or scattered around? Any brothers or sisters that went into law enforcement? The usual questions about what made a country kid want to become a city cop.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “That I never recalled you mentioning much about family and I thought you might have been an only kid. That’s right, isn’t it?”