A Garden of Vipers (28 page)

“You don't say nothin' to no one about that little ride you took, that's the way, right?”

“What ride, Miss Gracie?”

I stared at the slatted door and replayed what I'd learned during Miss Gracie's tour. I now knew my location. I knew who was in here with me, and perhaps a bit of why.

I tried to mesh the information with what Crandell's questions had suggested. I'd repeatedly told him Taneesha and Dani's relationship was no more than brief mentoring on Dani's part. But his insistence and the direction of his questions led me to a conclusion: Crandell was sure that whatever Taneesha had uncovered or been looking into had been shared with Dani.

“Buck Kincannon is Danbury's boyfriend,” I remembered screaming, the pain a blazing rope stretched from my groin to my brain. “Have that bastard verify it.”

“Buck got the bitch off the street,” Crandell had replied. “That's his end of it for now.”

Off the street?

I repeated the phrase in my mind. Had Dani's promotion from investigative reporter to anchor been a scheme to pull her inside, keep her busy with new tasks to learn? Kept under watch? The methodology fit: Move the potentially troublesome piece to a new board, as with Pettigrew.

Dani's insistence that someone had been in her house now seemed likely. Buck Kincannon had taken her out that night so Crandell or some lock-picking subcontractor could get inside, search for notes, for some tie between Dani and Taneesha.

But the suspicions of Dani's potential involvement demonstrated a lack of knowledge about journalists, their ferocity in protecting stories. The rush-hot pinnacle of the craft was breaking a fresh story, the celebrated exclusive. Even a fledgling like Taneesha Franklin would have kept her cards tight to her bosom.

Crandell had not believed me: I could have been screaming that the earth was flat.

The door pushed open. I held my breath. Miss Gracie clattered the cart into the room, snapped open a diaper. She dropped it into the wastebasket beside my bed. I raised an eyebrow and she tapped the bag slung on the IV holder.

“The bottle got muscle-relaxing dope in it. Keep you too loose-kneed to walk if you manage to get up. I messed with the tubes a bit, got it dripping onto a diaper in the waste can. Unless you want me to keep the IV in for the pain.”

“No!”

She snapped her finger to her lips, frowned. “Shhhh. I never know when he gonna walk in, checking.”

“Crandell?”

She closed her eyes, her face a mask of sorrow.

“Craziness. Jus' like it was four years back. Last year, too. Ever' time that nasty man's here, the world fall into hell.”

She reached for a second diaper, snapped it open. I arched my back and let her perform her tasks.

“Tell me more about Lucas,” I said. “His youth. Did you know him back then?”

“Mister Lucas was a crazy type, wild notions. It was like everyone else was running on little batteries and Lucas got plugged in to the full two-twenty volts. He'd take angry fits: yellin' at parties, saying what a bunch of fakes they all were, stomping away wishing he lived with a normal family. One time he started a big fire. Lift yo' butt.”

“Fire?”

“There was a family gathering. It was like usual. Ever'one came to Mister Buck's. Someone said something and Mister Nelson ran outside and began beating on Mister Racine's new car with a lamp. Them folks never stop fighting. There was a big howling set-to until the fire started. You can set your butt down now.”

“Lucas set a fire in the house?”

“He splashed charcoal lighter on some flowers outside, tossed a match. Then he put on another of his big screaming shows, calling ever'one names, saying what a bunch of hypocrites they all were.”

An earlier mention of Lucas and fire made me suspect pyromania, one of the major markers of a serial killer's pathology. But the pyromaniac is generally elusive and secretive: setting fires in abandoned buildings, off-hours construction sites, parked cars. The setter often retreats a short distance and watches in anonymity as clamor ensues.

Behold my power.

“Lucas didn't run off?” I asked.

“He stood there watchin', jumping up and down, screaming what a bunch of idiots they all were, how he wished they were all dead. Miz Kincannon was bad upset, I heard. Crying. An' that woman never cries.”

It stopped me: Maylene Kincannon crying?

I figured it took incredible emotional turmoil to evoke tears in someone devoted to absolute control. I wondered if Lucas's behavior had plunged Maylene Kincannon into her past. Made her terrified that her shrieking, fire-setting son was transmogrifying into a maniacal killer, like the sad and savage brother in her dysfunctional family.

What could someone do with that kind of fear?
I wondered.

 

A motion through his window caught Harry Nautilus's eye, headlights moving slow down the street, one light dimmer than the other, ready to fail. A minute later, the same car passed again.

Nautilus went outside to sit on the porch.

The car made a third pass. The brake lights flashed and the car slid to the curb. Pace Logan got out. He shot a nod at Nautilus, started up the walk, hands in his pockets. Logan stopped at the steps to the gallery. He looked uneasy, blew out a breath.

“Listen, Nautilus, I wanted to say I'm sorry. About Ryder. I, uh…”

“It's all right, Logan. Thanks.”

Logan looked into the street and cracked his knuckles one by one, then toyed with his watchband.
He wants to say something else,
Nautilus thought.

“Have a seat, Pace. Can I get you a drink?”

Logan looked surprised at the offer, or the use of his first name, or both. He sat in a wicker chair carefully, as if afraid Nautilus would pull it from beneath him.

“That'd be nice…Harry. Bourbon and water, if you got it. Thanks.”

Nautilus returned a minute later with the drink. Logan took a sip of bourbon, spun the glass in his palms. His cowboy boots tapped his nervousness.

“I was always happy as a street cop, Harry. It was good work that needed doing. Sometimes you had to think fast, but you didn't have to think deep, y'know? I was comfortable with that. But then, time goes on. When you meet people, tell 'em, ‘I'm a cop,' they're like
so what?
Or,
Hey, can you get a ticket fixed for me?
But tell 'em you're a detective and suddenly they're seeing
Kojak
or
Law and Order
. It was an ego thing, the chance to make like something more'n a guy that drove around knocking heads and standing between people yellin' at one another.”

Logan spun the glass a long moment.

“I'm not a very good detective, Harry. Not like you. It eats at me, sometimes.”

“Pace, you don't have to—”

“It goes back to that night in the rain, Harry. Taneesha Franklin. That's why I'm here, I think. To tell you a story.”

Nautilus felt electricity sparkle up his back. Said, “I'm listening.”

“Shuttles likes to cut me down like I'm a relic, telling me how law enforcement's becoming so scientific…. Did you know
this
about latents, Pace? Did you know
that
about DNA? Did you know satellites can track a car from a hundred-whatever miles up? Did you know the
new
generation of cruiser cameras can read license tags from four hundred feet away?”

“I didn't know that,” Nautilus said. “Maybe I'm a relic, too.”

“Shuttles loves talking about all the new crime-solving hoo-hah: computers, cameras, geo-whatever locators—anything that makes me come off like a dinosaur.” Logan cleared his throat. “I say this so you'll know I don't like Shuttles—I hate the cocky little prick, Harry—but I don't think I'm letting it mess with my judgment.”

“I believe you, Pace. Go on.”

“I was seeing a lot of the same scenery that night. Shuttles was driving and just cruising one quadrant of the district. I said, come on, Tyree, move it around some. So he moved a couple streets over. I thought, Fuck it, the kid's like a stuck needle. Then he told me how you'd been talking behind my back about what a lousy cop I was for screwing up that one case.”

“Pace, believe me, I never said a thing like—”

Logan held up a broad hand. “I know, Harry, leastwise I do now. Then the call came, you and Carson heading for the scene. But after Shuttles's goading I wanted to get there first, grab it from you.”

“But after you got there, you turned the case over to us, Pace. Why?”

“When I saw what had happened in that car, I knew you guys would do better than me and some fresh-from-a-uniform kid.”

“I'm not sure what you're trying to—”

“I been thinking about that night, Harry: After you and me had our little scuffle, I was leaning against the Mazda to catch my breath. Then I saw a plastic bag floating in the gutter, riding high as a sailboat, just starting to get pounded under by the rain. It was about then Shuttles found the knife. Am I crazy, or does that seem strange?”

Nautilus thought a few seconds. Saw what Logan was getting at.

“It could mean a whole lot, Pace. Depends on the rain flow and where Shuttles was standing.”

Logan sipped from his drink. “A couple weeks back I slipped two pictures out of the murder book. I wanted to refresh my head on the lay of the land. The rainwater was rushing away from where Shuttles found the knife.”

Nautilus looked at the aging detective, raised an eyebrow. “What you planning on doing with this observation, Pace?”

Logan smiled sadly, slapped Nautilus on the knee. Stood and shook stiffness from his legs.

“What I just did, Harry, hand it to someone who knows more than me. I'm probably just imagining things, but I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for the time and the drink.”

Logan stepped from the gallery, headed down the walk toward his car. Logan got inside, fired up the engine, pulled away.
I blew it,
Nautilus thought, watching the retreating taillights.
I looked at Logan's bumbling and fumbling, filed him under
Lazy,
filed him under
Dimwit.
Instead, I could have said, “Pace, sometimes this stuff can get complicated; here's an idea you might want totry….”

It seemed late when Crandell stepped into the room, but it was closer to dawn. I hadn't slept, thinking all night. He checked my restraints and I saw his watch: six a.m. I did the dopey-eyed look, moved slow as my heart beat fast. It had been hours since Miss Gracie had disconnected the IV tube, now running beneath the sheet and cover, dripping not into my blood, but the waste can beside the bed. Yesterday I had felt like a head attached to a rotting log. Now I felt muscles, ligaments, life and motion beneath my neck.

“Figure anything else out, Ryder?” Crandell asked, tapping the half-depleted IV bag, letting his finger trail along the tubing. He started to push aside the sheet and check my shunt.

I snapped my head his way. “This is all a setup, right? A major league piece of sleight of mind. Lucas isn't a psycho.”

It got his attention. He dropped the sheet and raised an eyebrow.

“You've been thinking, Ryder.”

I babbled a free-association of ideas stewing in my head for hours. Anything to keep his eyes on my face.

“Lucas was acting out, a high-strung kid in a family of self-absorbed greed mongers. He may have taken youthful rebellion to the limit, but he wasn't pathological. The brothers' problem was Lucas's brain. If he calmed down, Maylene might think Lucas was the one to hold the reins of the family businesses, not Buckie or Nelson or Racine, a trio of puddingheads.”

Crandell winked. “Those puddingheads are smart enough to call me. Made me a rich man.”

I said, “I know about the DuCaines, about Tree-house Boy. The family precedent for homicidal psychopathology.”

Crandell shrugged. “It was a fucked-up family.”

“Lucas's brain threatened the brothers. So you or someone killed Frederika Holtkamp. Told Maylene that Lucas did it, that he had an obsession with Freddy's teacher.”

“If you found out about her killer brother, you know the old gal knew a bit about obsession.”

“When Lucas escaped last month, you killed Taneesha Franklin in case Lucas made his way to Maylene and tried to convince her he wasn't a maniac.”

Crandell raised an interested eyebrow. “My, aren't we figuring some things out! Ms. Franklin got wind of some of the dealings, little stuff. She played junior reporter, going to the KEI offices and asking questions. What a dumb bitch. We used one of old Buck Senior's knives, a family heirloom.”

“Lucas's prints on it, of course.”

“Easily done. Shuttles got us a picture of the murder weapon from a Forensics report. We showed Mama Kincannon the family knife in a photo on official Alabama Forensics Bureau stationery and she fainted dead away. She truly thinks Luke is the incarnation of Tree-house Boy.”

“You killed Taneesha somewhere else, drove the car to the scene.”

Crandell clapped his big hands and grinned.

“Did it in an ol' barn. Franklin talked and talked. She didn't know squat, as it turned out, a waste of time. I made the car look like a robbery, drove it across town on a hauler, waiting for Shuttles to get there and plant the knife with the prints.”

Just like a car hauler had picked up Lucas's car after he'd been set up for the Holtkamp killing, Pettigrew's tracks to nowhere. I recalled another discrepancy. The trucker Dell had described the Wookiee figure as apelike, but Leroy Dinkins had described Lucas's build as tall and slender. Crandell was wide-built, with short and bowed legs. A simian body.

I said, “It wasn't Lucas the trucker saw.”

Crandell patted at the sides of his head.

“Ten-dollar Halloween wig-and-beard combo. Lucas never shaved in here, more youthful rebellion. When Mama read the police reports, she figured it was her boy indulging himself again.”

“And you're going to bring him back.”

“It won't take long. He'll stay close. Mama's still talking about keeping him here, putting more locks on the doors or whatever. But no more pussyfooting this time, Ryder.”

“What are you talking about?”

His grin went to a thousand watts. His eyes glittered with the wonder of himself.

“Lucas is going to kill one more time, Ryder. But no more holiday at the Ritz. Mama's finally gonna allow a complete lobotomy on Lukie-boy. We already got a Mexican doctor to do the digging.”

Disgust roiled in my guts. The three older Kincannon brothers were going to turn Lucas Kincannon into a vegetable, ending the threat of his superior mind.

“Who's Lucas going to kill?” I said.

Crandell gave it a two-beat pause. He looked carefully into my eyes, loving the moment.

“Buck Kincannon's girlfriend, Ryder. A pretty little blond newslady. Ever met her?”

 

Nautilus walked through the door of the Police Academy at eight in the morning. He'd been up until three, then grabbed a few hours of sleep, knowing his head had to be ready for what he might have to create. What was needed was confirmation, a sign that pulled it all together.

These days the academy was run by Major Dominick Purselli. Dom Purselli had been Shuttles's training officer and might be able to fill in details on the kid, make sense of Logan's story. Purselli knew Logan, the two were buddies, actually, and had been partners years ago. Like Logan, Purselli was something of an old warhorse, he just had a much better temperament.

Nautilus opened the door to Purselli's office. A squat woman with wiry hair sat at his desk.

“Hey, Alice, Dom in?”

“He's on vacation this week.”

“Vacation?”

“Somewhere up in Canada, moose country. Due back in a week. You teaching a class again this year?”

“Trying not to.”

“We'll get you.” Her face fell suddenly. “Harry, about Carson…”

Nautilus waved her words off.

She said, “I know. Tough to talk about.”

Nautilus jammed his hands in his pockets and walked past the Hall of Heroes, photos of officers who'd died in service to the force. There was a space for the next picture, the hanger already in place. He closed his eyes as he passed by, opened them as he passed twenty feet of displays honoring those who'd made some form of contribution to the Mobile Police Department.

Almost out the door, he snapped his fingers and spun, jogging back to the display case. There were plaques, photos, newspaper clippings. The items were arranged chronologically.
When did Shuttles start?
Nautilus checked dates, found the most recent. He saw a big wood-and-brass plaque with a photo of Nelson Kincannon mounted on it, the photo and a newspaper clipping coated with acrylic. Kincannon was canted toward the camera, eyes squinted above a big toothy grin.

Nelson Kincannon was shaking hands with Tyree Shuttles.

Feeling sweat prickle on his back, Nautilus read how, a few years back, Tyree Shuttles had been a recipient of the KEI scholarship for law-enforcement excellence, a recognition paying for all his college courses and any living expenses incurred, and granting him a “Merit Endowment” of fifty thousand dollars.

One hand gives…