Thicker Than Blood (Alo Nudger Series)

by John Lutz

  “Sure. Luanne said he got himself in a position where he didn’t have any choice, but she still hated him for it.”

  Nudger stared out at the shoppers passing by, at customers carrying trays of food among the tables. They all seemed the type to lead quiet, normal lives. He knew better. It was a world of facades. His work had taught him that. It was teaching him again. He said, “Did he get her into drugs, Nan?”

  “No, she did that on her own. But when he found out about it, he sure never did anything to help.” She shoved away the rest of her hamburger and looked sick. “He watched while she sucked more and more of that stuff up her nose. While she went to smoking crack and then to the needle. A habit like Luanne’s, it can make people do anything. Lie, fuck, steal. It can get them to put up with anything.”

  “Should I ask if you do drugs?”

  She said, “You shouldn’t ask that.”

  “Know a man named King Chambers?”

  “No.”

  “A black guy named Aaron? Wears a swastika on a gold chain for an earring.”

  “No.”

  “What if Luanne reported Rand to the authorities? Would you testify and help the charges stick to him?”

  “If I did that, I’d be in trouble with him. Trouble beyond what he did to Luanne. He’s got these associates who are bad people. You understand?”

  “I think so. But I hate to let him keep messing up Luanne’s life.”

  “If Luanne’s gone, maybe she did something about it on her own.”

  “You’re good friends, right?”

  Nan nodded.

  “It makes sense she’d get in touch with you.”

  “But she hasn’t,” Nan said. “That’s why I’m talking to you. I care about Luanne. We care about each other.”

  Nudger considered, then said, “Does Luanne know she’s adopted?”

  For the first time, Nan looked shocked. Her lower jaw dropped like a trap door. The violet disappeared as the whites of her eyes showed all the way around her pupils. “Adopted? No. I’m sure she doesn’t know.”

  “If you see her, I think you should tell her. Tell her that her real mother loves her, maybe too much, and she’s worried about her.”

  Nan had regained her composure and was staring at Nudger. She was quick as well as bright. “Wow! The woman with the gun! You gotta be kidding!”

  “Not,” Nudger said. “Luanne needs to know people care about her and want to help her. Her mother—both her mothers, actually. You, she knows about. And tell her I want to help.”

  “Why should you wanna help Luanne?”

  “It’s my job.”

  Nan gave him a wicked, violet glance. Old eyes again. “You wanna help her the way her father did? That your interest?”

  Nudger didn’t understand.

  Then he did. He had to fight to keep from reaching out and slapping Nan Grant. He told himself she was a kid and couldn’t help it, that her life must have driven her to a distrust of all men. He told himself that, but he wasn’t very convincing.

  Nan smiled. “We done talking?”

  He breathed out hard. “We can be.”

  “Good. I’m meeting somebody here any minute. A friend from my English class. We gotta do some studying together for a big test that’s coming up.”

  Nudger finished his beer in a couple of gulps and stood up. He pinched foam from his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “Thanks for talking with me, Nan. And when I said I wanted to help Luanne, that’s exactly what I meant.”

  She nodded but didn’t look up.

  He walked away, glancing back once to see her watching him, munching on her giant hamburger again.

  He went out the mall entrance and walked outside, along the side of a white, cast-concrete building to a department store entrance. Then he cut back through the store to the mall and approached the food court from another direction. He sat on yet another hard bench near yet another small potted tree and watched Nan Grant from a distance.

  Watched her for almost half an hour until her friend showed up.

  It wasn’t a friend from school. Unless Aaron of the earring was taking remedial courses.

  CHAPTER 25

  At work and at home, Dale Rand had constant police protection. But a bullet was a small object that could travel a great distance accurately and at an astonishing rate of speed. The protection might make it more difficult for Norva Beane to kill Rand on her second try, but it couldn’t prevent it. Nudger figured she’d wait until police protection slacked off, and time worked on Rand so that he felt more secure, before closing in on her quarry again. She was a country girl with a hunter’s patience as well as a marksman’s eye. Nudger was glad he wasn’t Rand, whose destiny lay in the cross hairs of the woman from Possum Run.

  Nudger was still determined to find Norva, and Luanne. Rand might be a help, but he refused to return Nudger’s calls. Following Nan Grant had led Nudger nowhere. She behaved like an ordinary high-school girl. She didn’t meet Aaron again, and Nudger was sure she didn’t know Luanne’s whereabouts. He knew it would be useless to ask her about Aaron, who was probably simply her drug contact, anyway. Or possibly Nan herself was dealing to the other high-school girls. An interesting possibility. Even alarming. But not surprising, really, and most likely irrelevant as far as Nudger was concerned.

  After a week of frustration, he decided to approach the one other player who might have some insight into where Norva or Luanne might be, and if they might be together.

  He waited until Rand had left for work in his black Caddy, watching as the police tail fell in behind the big car at the corner. It was possible the house was still being watched, even after a week, but Nudger knew he had to take the chance. He wasn’t going to break a law; the worst that could happen was that he’d be apprehended and taken in for an intense and unpleasant conversation with Massinger.

  He got out of the Granada, crossed the sunbaked street, and cut across the Rand’s front lawn. After leaning hard on a fancy brass button, listening to chimes sound like tolling bells deep inside the house, he waited and stared out at sunlight and shadow lying in soft patterns on the manicured grass. Something about grass and summer and sunlight. He’d played a lot of baseball as a kid, and staring at the level green lawn made him remember the smell of grass stains and oiled leather, the sting of his knuckles from pounding them into his glove in anticipation. The solid clonk of bat against ball, and the feel of lofting the tiny round mass from the sweet spot on the bat. He’d been able to hit pretty well, but he—

  The door opened. “Mr. Nudger. Hello.”

  Sydney was wearing a lacy pink robe with the hem of a pale blue nightgown showing around her knees. She was barefoot, reminding him of Norva Beane. She wore no makeup and he smelled no gin on her breath. She seemed sober.

  Nudger gave her the old sweet smile. She did seem to melt a bit. “I thought we oughta talk,” he said.

  She gave him back his smile, fainter, but he was sure more genuine. “My husband said for me not to talk to you. He sees you more as part of the problem than as part of the solution.”

  “That sounds Reaganesque.”

  “Well, my husband’s Reaganesque, some might say.”

  “Are you?”

  “No, I’m a lifelong Democrat.”

  “I mean, are you going to talk with me?”

  She studied him. Her eyes were puffy. Had she been crying? “Well, you did save Dale’s life.” She stepped back to admit him into the flow of cool air that was pressing out from the house. “We owe you, whether or not he thinks so. Anyway, a woman shouldn’t always do what her husband says.”

  “Sets a dangerous precedent,” Nudger agreed.

  He moved beyond Sydney, catching a whiff of lilac-scented perfume. Nice. Despite the ravages of Dale Rand and alcohol, she seemed a woman hanging onto her femininity and onto hope. But there was a brittleness about her, a subtle scent of desperation that the perfume couldn’t conceal.

  She led him through a short entry h
all and into a large living room with a green carpet and ornate, flawless Victorian furniture that had obviously been manufactured within the past decade. Chairs and drapes had a matching flower design. In a corner stood a tall, burled walnut cabinet, which was probably an entertainment center containing video and stereo equipment. There were clear plastic covers on the fancy sofa and on one of the chairs.

  Sydney apparently noticed Nudger staring at them. She said, “This isn’t the room we relax in. That’s in back, overlooking the pool.” She walked over and perched on the edge of the chair with the plastic cover. “Have you any idea where Luanne is, Mr. Nudger?”

  He found her pathetic. Plastic woman on plastic chair in plastic community asking about a daughter who wasn’t her own, to whom she apparently was plastic. “I’m trying to find Luanne and Norva Beane, Mrs. Rand.”

  “Of course. We all are.”

  If she thought the search for Luanne was none of his business she gave no indication. Why should she? The more people looking for Luanne, the more likely it was that she’d be found. He said, “I don’t think Norva abducted her or that they’re necessarily together.”

  “If she’s with that woman,” Sydney said, “I doubt she’s in any danger.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Weariness, maybe resignation, crossed her features like a play of dim light. “Just a feeling.” Hammersmith had said that Massinger had told Dale Rand about Norva’s claim that she was Luanne’s biological mother, but had Rand told his wife?

  “Have you searched for Luanne?” Nudger asked.

  “I’ve called everyone I could think of who might help, but they know nothing. I’d go out looking for her personally, but my car . . . hasn’t moved in months. A misunderstanding led to my license being suspended.”

  Nudger thought about sitting on the sofa but decided he’d be more comfortable standing. “I thought you might be able to tell me something that would help me locate her,” he said. “You’re her mother.”

  She looked down at her feet, then back up at him with a brave smile. “Luanne’s adopted, you know.”

  “I don’t see how that makes much difference. You must know her better than anyone.”

  Sydney took a deep breath. Pain moved like something alive in her eyes. “That woman Norva Beane is Luanne’s biological mother, isn’t she?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “A feeling I got the night of the shooting, and stronger after reading her description in the paper. Of course, Dale and I, we were never told the identify of Luanne’s true mother, but we did learn she was from the Ozarks. So it’s certainly possible. Besides, I always had this fear in me she’d enter our lives someday. But then, maybe all mothers who adopt feel that.”

  Nudger said nothing, musing on how impossible it was for him to understand what adoptive mothers felt.

  “And it would explain why she tried to kill Dale.”

  “I don’t see the connection,” he lied.

  “There is one.”

  “Did Massinger tell you Norva Beane claimed to be Luanne’s natural mother?”

  “No. Is she? Is my suspicion correct?”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “Yes.”

  Sydney nodded, weakly, as if she were an old woman whose head had become too heavy for her spindly neck. “Somehow she must have found out about Dale.”

  “Found out what?”

  “He hasn’t been quite the father he should be, that’s all.”

  “In what way?”

  Sydney had stopped nodding and sat with her head bowed. “He ignored her. All her life, he ignored her. Treated her like a ghost.”

  Sydney was still dancing around what she knew in her heart, around her guilt at not having stopped what was happening. Nudger wasn’t going to stab her with the truth.

  “My husband’s requested that the police drop their protection of him,” she said. “Demanded it, actually. He doesn’t realize the potency of Norva Beane’s desire to see him dead.”

  Nudger wondered if she knew the rest of it, the drugs, the pimping, and whatever might be going on with Horace Walling and illegal inside stock information. He could understand why Dale Rand didn’t want the police lurking about. They might afford some protection, but he also had something to fear from them. “I think he takes her seriously enough now,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Have you talked to Nan Grant? I understand she and Luanne are good friends.”

  “I’ve talked to her,” Sydney said. “She doesn’t know where Luanne is. She doesn’t know anything about this.”

  “What about Labor Day?” Nudger asked.

  She jerked her head up and looked at him curiously. “I don’t know. What about it?”

  “I just heard it mentioned, I think. I forget where. But it seemed to be in connection with whatever’s going on here. Was the family planning something for Labor Day?”

  “No. I think my husband has some sort of business deal that has something to do with it. That’s all I know about Labor Day. Other than it’s the week when Luanne will go back to school full time.”

  “Do you know Dr. Horace Walling?”

  “No. Dale’s been having mysterious conversations with someone he’s called Doctor. I suppose that could be him. Is Dale secretly ill? I’ve heard him refer to an illness.”

  “What kind of illness?”

  “Nothing serious. A cold or the flu. That’s all it is, right? He isn’t ill and keeping it from me?”

  “Not that I know of. Walling isn’t a medical doctor, he’s a business associate of your husband.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about any of that. Or a lot of other matters.” Her voice was rising in pitch and vibrancy. “Dale doesn’t tell me things, Mr. Nudger. I don’t know certain things! Do you understand that? Do you?” She suddenly slammed her palms to each side of her face, covering her eyes. She began to weep. Not sob, but weep. Wail.

  Nudger had no idea how to react to this. He uneasily shifted his weight from leg to leg, then he lumbered over and gently laid a hand on her trembling shoulder. She gave no indication that he was there. His throat tightened with sympathy. Her troubled daughter was missing and someone was trying to kill her husband. Dale Rand might be a bastard, but she loved him. That was her big problem. Nudger hated feeling so ineffectual. Hated the moistness that came to his own eyes and threatened to spill over into tears.

  He swallowed. “You gonna be all right, Mrs. Rand?”

  He thought she nodded, but he still wasn’t there. Not for her. She was as alone as a woman could be.

  After a while, he showed himself out.

  That evening Hammersmith called him at Claudia’s and told him death had caught up with the Rand family.

  Not Dale, though. Luanne.

  She’d been found in a vacant lot, her hands wired behind her, and a bullet in her head.

  CHAPTER 26

  Two blocks from the scene, Nudger saw bright lights in a haze among the stark outlines of two- and four-story buildings. A block away, he slowed the Granada and told a uniform that Hammersmith had sent for him. Nudger was scowled at and waved on. He parked near a yellow Crime Scene ribbon, which had become twisted like festive decoration in the warm breeze.

  An ambulance was at the scene, along with four patrol cars and several unmarked police vehicles parked at various angles. The crime scene unit’s white van was parked near the corner of the vacant lot that was flanked by condemned and obviously abandoned brick apartment buildings.

  Nudger climbed out of the car into the hot night and pushed his way through a crowd of onlookers, some of them somber, some of them jocular, and ducked beneath the yellow ribbon. He walked toward a knot of uniformed and plainclothes cops standing on the sidewalk. Several vehicles were parked with engines idling; exhaust fumes hung suspended in the humid air. When he got nearer, a white-haired detective named Smatherwell recognized him and nodded. Nudger asked where
Hammersmith was, and Smatherwell jerked his snow-capped head in the direction of several men, including a couple of uniformed paramedics, standing in a bright circle of light in the middle of the dark lot.

  One of the detectives said something, and everybody laughed, as Nudger waded into the knee-high weeds that grew determinedly from the lot’s meager soil. Rocks and broken glass crunched beneath his soles as he walked, and the weeds snatched at his ankles as if trying to trip him. There was a lot of moonlight as well as illumination from the bright lights that had been set up at the crime scene, yet darkness lay at Nudger’s feet, and now and then an odor like that of garbage drifted up to him. He didn’t like to think about what he might step on.

  He untangled his ankles from a snarl of rusty wire, almost falling, drawing the notice of Hammersmith. When he was free, he walked slowly toward the pool of bright light and the object of everyone’s attention on the ground. Hammersmith broke away from the knot of cops and technicians and joined him.

  “Lonely place to die, hey, Nudge?”

  “Everyplace is, I guess.” Nudger glanced at the bundle of dark clothing and pale flesh on the ground. Two men were bending intently over what was left of Luanne Rand, expert interpreters in the language of violence, reading her body for instructions as to how to solve the riddle of her death. A camera flashed, for a moment casting the scene in silhouette as if lightning had struck behind it. “You sure it’s her?”

  “ ’Fraid so, Nudge. No ID on the body, but she matches Luanne’s photographs. We’ll get a positive on her when we compare prints, and we’ll have the mother or father come down and identify her when they get to the morgue. You’ve seen the girl before, right?”

  Oh-oh. Nudger nodded reluctantly.

  “Take a look, why doncha? Verify what we think we know. It’s not bad. She’s not messed up, and there doesn’t seem to have been any sex stuff.”

  Nudger’s stomach moved. “How long’s the ME think she’s been dead?”

  “Two days, maybe.”

  “Jesus, Jack!”