“Right. Snakes. But only when we’re not lynchin’ East Coast Jew boys.” A combination of jet lag and pent-up frustration at work was not helping Kel’s already abraded patience.
Levine didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I hate this shit hole. I hate the people. I hate the place. I hate this goddamn weather. But I follow orders. I’m here until I get this case solved or until it’s clear that it can’t be solved. Get this solved and I can go home—it’s that simple—and I don’t intend to let anything—or anybody—get in the way of that. I’m running this investigation, and I’m going to be watching you. You put any problems you got with that Gonsalves case on the shelf for now, understand? You fuck with me, your organization screws with me, and I’ll rip your head off and piss down your throat. We clear?”
“I think that’s pretty clear.”
“As long as that’s understood. Questions?”
“Yeah, one. You always been an asshole or d’you have to take lessons in school?”
“I taught the lessons.”
“Good, as long as that’s understood.” Kel filed away his real response for another occasion and reminded himself that he’d promised to be good and mend fences—without the use of a shotgun. He waited for the air to clear and then asked, “So, what’s your revised plan? Since there are no remains. Special agents must get issued a Plan B, I assume.”
“Well, don’t know if I’d call it a Plan B,” Levine replied calmly, as if he hadn’t just promised to piss down Kel’s headless throat, “but I’m hoping to finally get to meet with the Split Tree chief of police tomorrow—seems he’s been out of town at some meeting. That activity should take all of about fifteen minutes, I’m guessing, and I doubt that it will be very illuminating, if the county sheriff is any indication of the quality of law enforcement around here. Other than that, I’m winging this as I go, and I’m open to any suggestions that you might have as to where to go from here.”
“Yeah, back to the goddamn airport.”
“Not an option, Doc. Remember that river we crossed back there? We just entered the Twilight Zone. So start thinking.”
“No, no—oh, no. You seem to have confused me with someone who has any business bein’ here,Fed . This is your forty-year-old bucket of worms; I’m not at all convinced that the case my Lab’s workin’ on has any connection here whatsoever. In fact, I find it almost impossible to believe that it does.”
“Me either, but that doesn’t matter.”
“But you say goin’ back to the airport is out?”
“’Fraid so.”
“Uh huh…so…other than what you anticipate will be a fifteen-minute fruitless meetin’ with the police chief tomorrow, what are we goin’ to do for the next oh, I don’t know, the next week?”
“Dunno, but we’ll think of something by morning.” He looked at his watch in the soft glow of the dashboard lights. “And that would be in a couple of hours from now.”
Chapter 14
Split Tree, Arkansas
THURSDAY, AUGUST18, 2005
Kel and Levine arrived in Split Tree about four o’clock in the morning. Levine went straight to the town’s only motel, where he’d had a room for the last week. Fortunately he’d made a reservation for Kel, for as they pulled into the parking lot of the Sleep-Mor Motor Lodge on the corner of Magnolia Street and Tupelo, their car lights illuminated an armada of aluminum and fiberglass fishing boats. It was the final day of the two-day Third Annual Locust County Catfish Master’s Invitational Tournament, and all of the motel’s rooms had been let out to men with a singular purpose.
The motel’s night clerk was also its owner; an enthusiastic Pakistani who had solved the problem of syrup-mouthed Arkansans wrapping their tongues around his unpronounceable last name by simply calling himself “Sam, Your Congenial Host.” So the sign by the street read. So did his business cards. The office smelled of curry, as did the parking lot, the linens, the carpet, and everything else within a quarter-mile radius.
Despite the hour, Sam welcomed them enthusiastically and checked Kel in with a minimum of trouble and paperwork. They’d walked to their rooms past underpowered air-conditioners that ground and rattled and leaked rusty condensation onto the sidewalk. Undraped windows revealed overweight men, sometimes three and four to a room, already awake, sitting on the twin beds in their underwear and Rebel Lure hats, dry casting against the wall and hooting loudly—either in admiration or in derision for the effort—neither Levine nor Kel could really tell which.
In room 12A, Kel didn’t undress. He lay in bed, eyes closed, listening to his pulse and to the sounds of summer: buzzing cicadas and fat, glossy-brown June bugs that swarmed and ticked against the windows. He listened and tried to fall asleep.
For what remained of the short night there was the irregular pop, pop, pop of plastic lures striking the adjoining walls.
And then it was morning.
Daybreak on the Mississippi floodplain erupts with heat and light that make late slumber impossible.
They had arranged to meet at eight-thirty for breakfast at the Albert Pike Café across the street from the Sleep-Mor; Sam the Congenial Host had recommended it the night before. He said it served American food. Levine arrived early. Kel was a few minutes late; he had needed to make a couple of phone calls first thing, and had to wait for some offices to open. He hadn’t anticipated that this would engender much of a delay, but it did, for it seemed that Sam, to economize, had not equipped the Sleep-Mor with telephones in any of the rooms. Instead, he would carry his cordless phone to your room and then stand patiently outside your door while you completed your call.
When Kel finally located the FBI agent, he was on his second go-round of coffee and toast and what appeared to be the first go-round of a bad mood. Settling into the booth across from him, Kel flagged over a large-boned waitress who was dressed in Wrangler blue jeans that he wished were a couple of sizes larger and a once-white T-shirt that exhibited so much food residue that it could be used as a spare menu in a pinch. She was as pleasant as she was wide, and she smiled easily and called him “Sugar,” as he ordered biscuits and gravy and black coffee.
The diner was filled with locals, mostly farmers in sweat-stained gim’me hats that advertised Round-Up herbicide, or Big Foot Lorsban, or Pioneer Seeds, or simply directed the onlooker to ask them some question such as “Do you give a shit?” It was a little before nine, and their day was already half over. There were a few other round-bellied men, their short-sleeved shirts so taut across the middles that they looked like late-summer melons about to burst. They had colorful, wide ties and dark socks that suggested they were probably managers at the Piggly Wiggly or the Wal-Mart or the Farmer’s Bank.
“Sleep well?” Levine asked.
“Well, I didn’t catch any catfish, if that’s what you mean.”
Levine managed a small, fleeting wisp of a smile and took another quiet sip of coffee. “So what’s your game plan?”
“My game plan? I believe we chewed this piece of gristle last night. This is your game, I’m an anthropologist, remember? I’m just excess baggage until you find a skeleton. And if I recall where we left off the conversation last night—make that this mornin’—you were the one designated to think of somethin’. Remember?”
The waitress returned and smiled broadly at Kel. She called him “Sugar” again as she placed a cup of black coffee and a large platter of biscuits blanketed with a thick, lumpy gray liquid in front of him, telling him that she’d given him an extra ladle of gravy. She lingered longer than necessary and made sure that he understood that all he had to do was give a holler if he wanted anything else.
Kel thanked her.
Levine watched with amused interest, his attitude slowly improving. “Sugar?”
“You’re obviously not from around here, are you, son? Everybody’s ‘Sugar’ down here, at least when orderin’ food and doin’ business—you just wait till they start blessin’ your heart. She’s got the look of a genuine heart-blesse
r to her.”
“All I know is that I didn’t get a ‘Sugar’ when I ordered. In fact, I thought she was going to spit on me when I first sat down. But then, I was never much of a magnet for fat women.”
“And I am?” Kel frowned, trying to figure where that comment had originated.
“No offense intended…Sugar.” The second cup of coffee was definitely having a notable effect on Levine’s mood.
Kel took another bite of biscuits and extra gravy and chewed, looking at the man across the booth from him rather than at Levine.Definitely Piggly Wiggly manager material, he decided. Finally he swallowed and turned his attention back to the special agent. “Now it’s my turn. I’m the one who flew around the world to assist you, remember? And let’s put some emphasis on the wordassist —as in, this is not my case to figure out.”
“Believe me, Doc, no one is more pissed off than I am that there seems to be somewhat of a shortage of John Doe skeletons around here. Believe me. And as I told you last night, I asked for someone from the Smithsonian three weeks ago, count ’em—three weeks ago,” he emphasized the number three by tapping the butt of his coffee spoon against the wood-grained laminate tabletop, “back when I thought I was coming down here to take custody of some DNA samples. And let’s also remember for the record that I didn’t ask for you. I wanted some help, that’s true, but not from the C-I-Sonofabitching-L.”
“Well, the C-I-Sonofabitchin’-L is what you got. I’m here, remember?”
“Well, so am I, Doc, so am I—and the answer to your question is that I have nothing planned until this afternoon when I finally get to meet with the chief of police. You’re more than welcome to tag along, but until then, rather than being pissed off that your boss and my boss sent us out here to the fifth ring of Dante’s Inferno, why don’t we shelve the I-can-be-madder-than-you-can attitude and try and get along.” He finished off his coffee and replaced the cup on the table, and then met Kel’s eyes, waiting for the next jab and parry.
“My wife’s not fat,” Kel fired back a salvo of reconciliation.
Levine replayed that response a couple of times before answering. “Glad to hear it, Doc. Neither is mine, but I’m not sure…”
“Just clarifyin’ for the record that business about bein’ a magnet for fat women.”
Levine hesitated momentarily before smiling. “Consider it clarified…Sugar.”
Kel quickly finished his breakfast and took another sip of coffee before pushing his plate back from the edge of the table. “Hey, you have a cell phone, by any chance?”
“No. Don’t you? Would have thought a big-shot lab director would have one.”
Kel shrugged off what he assumed was an unintentional insult. “In the rush to get here, must have left it in my wife’s car.”
Levine looked around for a pay phone, then back at Kel. “Sorry. You need to make a call right now?”
“Thinkin’ about it. My boss doesn’t think I check in often enough when I’m on the road. Thought I might give him a call at home. Just to let him know I arrived.”
Levine looked confused. He glanced at his watch. “What the hell time is it in Hawaii?”
Kel smiled. “About three-thirty in the mornin’.”
“You pretty popular with the front office, are you?”
“I try.”
Levine wiped his mouth with a napkin. He took a breath to ease the transition. “So, do we have a plan for this morning?”
“Hmmm. Well, for starters, why don’t we go talk to Jimmie Trimble’s mother? Her son is one of the men involved in my end of this case, and it’s her mitochondrial DNA that doesn’t match. Probably a dead end, but we might as well see if she knows anythin’ that could help. I truly doubt it, but if nothin’ else, I’d like to verify that Jimmie Trimble wasn’t adopted.”
“Sure,” Levine replied. “You think he was adopted?”
“Probably not, but that’d explain the DNA mismatch. Won’t fix your problem, though, either way. But while we’re here I might as well tie up that loose end. Assumin’ I can figure a way to ask that sort of question without gettin’ us kicked out of her house. It may be a sensitive area with her—adoptions sometimes are, especially with older women.”
“Fine. She shouldn’t be too difficult to locate—this isn’t the biggest city. Maybe someone in here knows her address.”
“It’s 504 West Boulevard North,” Kel replied as he held up a slip of paper between his fore and index fingers. “Shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“Hmm, I was right, that didn’t take long at all.”
“That’s why I was late. I called Navy Casualty up in Millington, Tennessee, this mornin’. Talked to the rep handlin’ her case for us, his secretary really, to see if there was anythin’ about Mrs. Trimble that I needed to know before goin’ to see her—she have a glass eye I shouldn’t stare at? She hear voices? Carry a loaded gun? That sort of thing. Also got an address for her.”
“Current?”
“I guess you can call it current; fact is, she’s had the same one since 1945, apparently.”
“You suppose she’s home now?”
Kel looked at his watch. “I certainly hope so. She’s expectin’ us in about ten minutes.”
They paid the waitress. Her name was Joletta, and she signed the back of their bill “Thanks, Jo” and drew a small happy face with a blue ballpoint pen. As they were leaving she called out for them to “come on back, now.” Levine kept walking but Kel paused, nodded, and waved, sure that they would. It always paid to leave a good impression.
Levine was unlocking the car when Kel caught up to him. The boat trailers from the previous night were gone, and their car now looked ridiculous parked all by itself a football field away from their rooms. Levine paused before getting in, his arm on the warm roof as he looked across to Kel and said, “Something I forgot to mention. The local sheriff here and I didn’t hit it off so well the other day.”
“And?”
“And he’s sort of assigned me a keeper—Deputy Sheriff Jimbo Bevins.” Levine got into the car and closed his door.
Kel did likewise. “And?”
“And, I’m happy to not have him shadowing us right now, and since he doesn’t know I’m back in town, why don’t we try and keep it that way as long as we can.” He started up the car and slipped it into reverse.
In a town as small as Split Tree you don’t have to drive in too many circles before finding your way. Had they not made the big-city mistake of looking for a street that seemed to fit the traditional definition of a boulevard, they could have found it much sooner. As it turned out, it was a pleasant little street lined with root-cracked cement sidewalks and heat-stunted trees. On the corner, two young boys were surveying a large nest of bagworms hanging from the branch of a sorrowful persimmon tree. The leaves around the bag were yellowed and sickly, and the boys had an old red mop handle, its end wrapped with a cotton rag soaked in kerosene, that they were fixing to light on fire and use on the worms.
The houses on the street were older than some they had passed, pre–World War II by a generation—and the better part of a generation at that. Most were wood, painted white with colorful shutters and dark asphalt shingle roofs and red-brick chimneys. Each house had a railed porch, and the number of chairs visible on them suggested a considerable amount of evening gossip still took place. The grass was parched and brittle and had been since June and would be until next March when the rain would soften it up.
The white clapboard southern bungalow at 504 West Boulevard North had nothing to recommend it over its neighbors, except perhaps for an excess of tidiness. Like its neighbors, it had a gray enameled porch with white posts. There was a glossy magnolia tree standing sentry at each corner of the house, the roots having long ago cracked the foundation wall. They were still covered in fragrant, showy white flowers despite the late summer heat. The yard was probably quite bucolic in the spring; there were neatly trimmed azalea and crepe myrtle bushes and marigolds in the flowerbed—
the last gone dormant—and end-of-summer honeysuckle vining around the base of the gaslight by the sidewalk.
They parked on the street, killed the engine, and got out of the car.
Only then did they see her.
“Miss Trimble.” Kel added an extra dollop of syrup to the accent of his childhood as he mounted the three concrete steps leading to Grace Trimble’s house. He walked quickly, and Levine trailed in his wake. Despite the morning heat, which already was approaching the low nineties, the elderly woman was seated on a green tubular-metal glider on the front porch. She probably had been there all morning—people of her generation tended to eschew air-conditioning—and for that matter she had probably been there for most of the last four decades. She had watched them walk up the sidewalk in front of her house without a trace of curiosity shadowing her face. “I’m Robert McKelvey—we spoke a little while ago on the phone.”
She smiled and nodded. The glider clicked rhythmically. Almost hypnotically.
“And this here’s Michael Levine,” he said, with a sideward bob of his head in Levine’s direction. The air had that thick, wet quality of summer in the South, and the sweet smell of the magnolias and honeysuckle mingled with the dusty odor of dry plantain and nutgrass pollen.
Grace Trimble kept her eyes on Kel throughout the introductions. She motioned them to two wood-and-wicker rocking chairs and as they took a seat she cocked her head slightly, smiled, and asked, “You Robert McKelvey’s little boy?”
“Yes, ma’am, I sure am. Don’t know how little, anymore,” he said as he patted his stomach as a visual aid. “You knew my father?” The McKelveys had once been serious landowners in the area, helping to found the Farmer’s Bank of Locust County. But that was before the Depression and the wave of land speculators who’d offered pennies to the dollar for drought-cracked acres of Mississippi River floodplain. Still, the unexpected familiarity took Kel by surprise.
She nodded slowly before responding. “I certainly did. He was a couple of years ahead of me in school. He was about the handsomest young man—just purdy—he looked so much like a young Errol Flynn.”
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