The park was nearly empty. The lake was a dull, thick gray; matched the sky almost exactly. The black branches spilled out over the sky and the surface of the water like spilled ink. The air was cold, but a little too humid to be crisp. Humidity in January: there’s the South.
Since I’d been off-kilter for a few days at that point, the extreme adrenaline rush I felt was just one more strange biochemical convolution in a long list of things that were messing me up.
Still, it made me especially alert. Before I’d even reached the edge of the lake, I heard some rustling in the leaves that sounded like somebody walking around. All I could see were shadows, but the shadows were alive, and when I walked a little farther, the noise stopped suddenly, and the air was still. The only sound, besides the pounding in my temples, was the scrape of my soles on the sidewalk that ran to the bridge.
I stopped about three yards shy of the actual overpass and just stared. Down the ravine to my left was a thicker woods, an occasional hobo jungle; sometimes a lovers’ lane. Seemed deserted, but in the shadows, who could tell for certain? To my right, the still waters of the little lake lay sullen and gray.
Stillness. Breathe in, breathe out. Let him make the first move. Let him come to me.
When you relax like that, around a center of almost explosive tension, it can be very expanding. I felt my peripheral vision, for example, registered just at a full 360 degrees, and I could have sworn I heard the beating of little cricket hearts in the black shadows.
I don’t know how much time passed like that — could have been thirty seconds, could have been half an hour — but finally Burnish Huyne made his play.
“Okay, obviously you know I’m here.” His voice was edgy.
I didn’t move, but I placed his voice just under the first left column of the overpass.
“You make a great target, standing there with the light behind you.”
Still, all I did was breathe. What did I care? Bullets bounced off me … when I was in that particular frame of mind.
“That is you, right, Tucker?” More nervous. Good. And the sun behind me obviously obscured my face. Better.
Finally he came out of the shadows. He had a gun in his hand, but it was pointed at the ground. It was a small snub nose — obviously not his police weapon.
“Flap?”
“Hello, Burnish.” First names, I noted. “Dally says hey.”
Big sigh from his direction. “Okay, it is you.”
“That’s a surprise?” I still didn’t move. Didn’t want to make him any more nervous than he was. “You asked me to meet you here, remember?”
“Yeah …” He trailed off.
“So?”
“Come over here.”
I shook my head. “Not really. Why don’t you come out in the light?”
“Because I’ve got something to show you.”
I smiled. “That’s the wrong thing to say, especially to a convicted heterosexual such as myself, at this particular bridge.”
“Yeah.” He laughed a little. “I guess you’re right. Still. I have to ask you to come over here.”
“Put your little toy gun up first.”
He looked down. “Oh.” Back at me. “I forgot I had it in my hand.”
“Uh-huh.”
He shoved it back in his shoulder holster and held out both hands so I could see they were empty. “Okay?”
I held my ground. “What did you want to show me?”
“Believe it or not, it’s paperwork.”
I looked around. Over by the bathhouse I’d seen a blur, and when I looked, I could see two guys in jogging suits trying very hard to look natural. So there actually was a stakeout in progress. Better and better.
I tilted my head in their direction. “Friends of yours?”
He smiled. “I’d say about one in fifty undercover types really knows what he’s doing. The rest, you can always make.”
“Right.”
“They’re keeping an eye on that part of the street by the gazebo.”
I nodded. “I can see that.”
He lowered his voice. “That’s why I want you to come over here. I don’t need anybody knowing my business.”
“So why meet here in the first place?”
“I’m not like you.” His voice was tough and relaxed for the first time; he was getting back to his old self. “I occasionally have to go where I’m told. I’ve got a boss.”
“I see.”
“I’m supposed to be the head of this investigation, on the periphery of which you seem to be lurking.”
“Right,” I told him. “But I feel I’m more in the actual center of things. Of course, philosophically speaking, everybody feels more or less in the center of things. I mean, from your own perspective, you are the center of the universe, after all.”
“I am?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t feel that way very often.”
And that’s the sentence that made me walk toward him. I figured a person who was willing to examine himself at least to that extent deserved to be considered a genuine human being — somebody, in short, who might not plug me the first chance he got.
“So what paperwork?”
He seemed relieved that I was joining him in his little hideaway. “Two files, really, are all I brought with me. But I think they reflect the bigger picture.”
Under the bridge he had a thermos, a short folding stool — further evidence of the stakeout — and a briefcase. He’d opened the case and pulled out two manila folders before I’d reached his spot.
“I got all this stuff together when you mentioned your friend Winston. It occurred to me to start thinking like IAD. This is Beth Dane’s short file.” He didn’t even look up at me. “These are are her prints, the ones we used to identify the body. They were on file already from a couple of vice busts, right?”
“I see.” I came under the bridge. The final auburn light from the west spilled over the police sheets.
“Now, the thing is — and I know this is probably my imagination — but take a look at the prints.”
I did. “All fingerprints look pretty much alike to me. I don’t have your discriminating eye. Enlighten me.”
“Look at the thumb here, for example.” He pointed.
“So?”
“Doesn’t it seem kind of … small?”
I peered closely at it. “I guess.”
“Almost like a kid’s print, instead of an adult’s.”
“Beth Dane wasn’t much of an adult, was she?”
“Twenty-three,” he said.
“So …”
“So, still, Beth Dane was a big girl, wasn’t she?”
“I never met her.” Except after she was already dead.
“Dane’s a big man, though.”
I nodded. “That’s right. Probably six five and at least two hundred fifty pounds.”
“She’d have to have freakishly small hands” — he looked back down at the page — “to make prints that small.” He looked up at me. “Did you notice that her hands were abnormally small?”
“Under the circumstances,” I said, “the fact that she was swinging from a lamppost and her face was black and bloated really occupied as much of my mind as I could give to the event.”
“No,” he told me firmly, “that’s not you. You take in these little details, whether you register them consciously or not. I’ve heard the stories.” He stared at my hat. “You’ve got a computer up there.”
“It’s never been put quite that way.” I smiled. “Probably because it’s not true. But I know what you’re getting at.” He wanted a peek at my trick too. “I’m sorry to report that nothing along the lines of what you’re talking about has come to me. I got no images of tiny hands.”
Big shrug. “Well, here’s the other thing. More in the line of confirmation.” He pulled out another file. “Minnie Moran? She died of toxic shock, overdose of scarlet fever Dick test vaccine.”
“The outbreak in Argentina. The tango.”
> “Right. So this stakeout really means something. The third toxin — the rabies thing — is still out there. I guess that’s pretty much along the lines you’ve already figured out.”
“Hate to bring this up” — I looked at the ground — “because I know how you like to jump to conclusions where Mickey Nichols is concerned, but I have to tell you that he sent me a little note about that very vaccine just yesterday and seemed to know the murders and the toxins were connected.”
“Oh, really?” He stared at my profile.
“Yes, but in all fairness, he might have gotten the idea from your journal.”
“My journal?”
“That’s right. Here’s how it worked.” I looked up at him. “Mickey’s got guys all over. Even all over your station house, it would seem. One of them sees you’re working on your journal, gets a shill who says hello to you in some distracting way, while the other guy walks behind you, swipes a gander at whatever it is you’re writing, and it’s all over in two seconds. You go back to writing without ever even knowing.” I blinked. “He compared it to picking pockets.”
“Jesus.”
“So he’s very suspicious of you — and how you knew there was a connection between the toxins and the murders. And he’s infected me with the same paranoia.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Not one bit.” I met his eyes.
He stared hard. “Then it was kind of stupid of you to come out with me today.”
“But I had to know.” I smiled. “I had to know about you.”
“And do you now?”
“Not really.” It was getting harder to see him in the shadows, and the light was fading fast.
“What can I do to assure you?” His voice was anything but reassuring.
“Well.” I blew out my breath, and it made a little ghost. “How about a little Wallace Stevens.”
I’d clearly surprised him.
“You told me the other day that you were a Wallace Stevens fan. Was that just to impress Ms. Oglethorpe, or do you really know anything about the greatest American poet of the twentieth century?” I’d said it mostly to throw him off-balance. That, at least, had worked. But I also really wanted to see if he actually knew any of the poetry. I was betting that he didn’t.
He stared. Then he put the files back in his briefcase and set the case on the ground between his thermos and his seat.
“‘I was of three minds,’” he began, “‘Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.’ Know it?”
“‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’? Sure. One of my faves, if something of a pop choice, from the body of the artist’s work. Why that line?”
“Seemed right,” he said, suddenly reaching for his inside coat pocket, “since I still can’t decide whether to trust you, arrest you, or shoot you dead.”
27. Smoke on the Water
The last of the light was nearly gone. I couldn’t see Huyne’s face, but I could see his gun just fine.
“A guy like me,” I began in a very matter-of-fact manner under the circumstances, “believe it or not, can go sometimes a whole year without even seeing a gun. And here this is my second look at one in the same week. What do you make of that?”
He stared. “Maybe you’re just associating with the wrong crowd.”
“That could be it.” I stuck out my lower lip. “But I think it’s more because of the general angst of January.”
He lowered the gun a little, and I got the impression he thought he hadn’t heard me correctly.
“January,” I went on, “contrary to poetical opinion, is the cruelest month. It’s supposed to be a brand-new year, but in general most people experience the same old things. And they’re suffering from holiday hangover — I mean, the psychological kind — so they’re extra vulnerable to an attack of angst. See?”
“Not even remotely, so shut up.” He stepped out from under the bridge. “Let me get right to the point. You didn’t react to my little news here the way I thought you would.”
“So,” I smiled, “this was something of a test.”
“It was.”
“And I didn’t pass?”
“You didn’t register.”
“Why?” That stumped me.
“I thought you were either going to be tremendously surprised and curious about the fingerprint evidence, or you were going to start in with all manner of explanation. The former would have told me you were clean, the latter that you were hiding something.”
“I see,” I told him. “So I didn’t play the game the way you wanted me to.”
“Right.”
“And now you don’t know what to make of me.”
“Right.”
“Well” — I shifted my weight to one leg — “that makes two of us.”
The gun went lower still. “Sorry?”
“I say, I don’t know what to make of you either, and this little scene has only made me more uncomfortable about you.”
“What are you talking about? You still think I’m in with the killer?”
“I still think that maybe you’re more involved in this whole mess than you ought to be,” I said. “Although maybe I’m waxing naive here, in light of the fact that you’re the one with the gun. Still, there are cops all around apparently, and you’re certainly smart enough to realize that Ms. Oglethorpe knows exactly where I am … and is looking to hear from me within the hour.”
He paused long enough for my adrenaline to get stirred up a little more and for my eyes to dart left for a second, as I thought about where I’d dodge just in case he started to fire his little pistol. No need in testing my bullet-bouncing theory in the middle of the January Angst Festival, after all.
Slowly, almost outside the realm of possible human movement, I saw the gun coming back up, and a little closer, headed toward pointing itself at my heart. I took a slow, silent breath in through my nostrils and concentrated hard on his eyes. Most people who’ve shot a gun more than once usually tense their eyes just before they squeeze the trigger — something about muscle memory from the previous noise and thrust of the firing gun.
The air seemed to grow more humid, and then the light was gone. We were silhouettes under a stone bridge in the first shadows of the night. It occurred to me that it wouldn’t be the worst time to consider taking up old-fashioned prayer.
“Hey!”
A voice shot out across the lake so suddenly I thought for a split instant that Huyne had fired his gun. He flinched too.
“Detective Huyne! Quick!”
He lowered the pistol.
I called out, “What is it?”
He shot me a look, then moved around me to the sidewalk just above us. “Who’s calling?”
“It’s Conway. Over here, by the ball field!”
He moved more quickly than I would have thought possible. I followed.
We ran across the street that separated the bathhouse from the big stone steps. The steps ran up to the baseball and soccer fields. The lampposts blinked on all at once, and suddenly a cold, eerie light washed over everything. I was only three or four steps behind Huyne. He still had his gun in his hand.
We took the steps three at a time, and once we were halfway up, we could see the fields — and the cause of all the commotion. There was a third body hanging from the post on the other side of the fields, close to Piedmont Road.
We ran faster. We both slowed only a little just before we got there, but I was pretty winded. Four or five cops were already there, staring up at the victim.
Before he was even among them, Huyne started yelling, “How the hell could this happen with everybody and his brother watching? Who was here at the road?”
A beefy young guy raised his hand. “I was over by the Driving Club, about half a block away, sir.” He sounded scared. “I seen the car pull up, and I headed this way, you know, because it ain’t no parking on the street here. And then I seen somebody get out with a big bundle, and then they came in here where I couldn’t see
for the trees and all, and three seconds later, I swear, they was back out and drove away real fast down Piedmont going north.”
“Just one person?”
“Yes, sir.” The kid was still breathing hard from the run. Everybody was.
I was surprised to see Huyne turn my way. “How could one person carry a body, hoist it up like this, and get back out in that kind of time?”
I stared up at the body. Even though it was hard to see because you had to look right into the lamp, you could tell there was something wrong with it. The way it moved, the way it hung.
“Detective?” I was squinting into the light.
“Yes?” He was not sounding patient.
“That’s not a body.”
Everybody looked.
“What?” Huyne’s voice was as irritated as I’d ever heard it.
“It’s nothing like the other two.” I was watching how easily the little bit of breeze was moving this one. “I think it’s a dummy.”
Guys started moving around underneath it and shading their eyes to get a better look.
One of the feet fell off.
The shoe, stuffed with an empty sock, came plummeting to the dirt.
Then one of the men, before someone could tell him not to, jumped up like a basketball player and swatted at the thing.
The pants, filled with wadded-up newspaper, swung away and came to land a few feet south of our little group.
“Cut it out!” Huyne shouted. “Conway, go get the damned ladder!”
Conway hustled away.
Huyne shook his head. “What the hell?”
I was still staring up at the torso. “It’s got a note, though — like the others.”
“Why would somebody do this?”
“It’s a copycat.” One of the officers ventured the suggestion.
The beefy guy shrugged. “Just kids, having fun.”
“Quiet, all of you.” But Huyne’s voice was more calm. “Let’s let Mr. Tucker give us his opinion.”
“Me?” I shrugged. “What makes you think I’ve got an opinion?” I looked up. “But I would like to read that note.”
We all fell silent. A couple of awkward minutes later Conway returned with an aluminum stepladder.
Dancing Made Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 4) Page 15
