A Garden of Vipers (31 page)

Trees whipped by the sides of Nautilus's cruiser, the country lane tight. The meeting spot was one Nautilus was familiar with, an old strip center serving what had once been a rural community, now just a couple miles from the edge of the growing city. Nautilus figured Crandell lived nearby, the site like he and Carson had figured, out of the city, but still allowing fast access anywhere in Mobile.

The meeting location was a pizzeria in the center, A-Roma Pizza. The closer he came, the more he became convinced he should let the county cops in on his plan. This was Mobile County, and he knew several guys on the force, not a Cade Barlow in the bunch. Nautilus waited to pass a slow-moving trailer on the road ahead. He was about to accelerate when the trailer swerved erratically, slid from the road, ground to a hard stop.

Nautilus had dropped back a hundred yards, thinking the trailer or the truck pulling it had blown a tire. He passed the stopped rig slowly, checking. It was an extended-cab truck with a vehicle hauler behind it. The hauler was empty.

The cab of the pickup exploded open and a man dropped halfway to the ground, clawing at his chest, the seat belt trapping his body. Nautilus braked hard and stared in horror, his headlights framing the grisly scene.

Don't get out of the car
, a voice said from the back of his head.
Call it in, but don't get out.
His hand reached for the radio, was stopped by the flashing red light in his rearview: a vehicle with an emergency flasher stuck atop the roof, volunteer fireman. Hopefully the guy had some medical training.

“I'm an EMT,” called a voice from the vehicle behind as the door opened, feet started his way. “What happened?”

“Looks like a heart attack,” Nautilus yelled back. “I'm a cop. I'll call it in. You got a defibrillator?”

“No. But I have one of these.”

Nautilus felt something hard press his ear. Caught the smell of gun oil. The voice at his shoulder said, “How's about you keep your hands off that mike and right up there where I can see them.”

The man hanging from the truck suddenly slipped to the ground, somersaulted to standing, brushed himself off. Nautilus saw a patch on the guy's shoulder:
PRIVATE SECURITY
. He was a tall, raw-boned guy with tight eyes. He grinned at the Crown Vic, then ignited two road flares. He tossed one behind the Crown Vic, another in front. Anyone passing would think car trouble.

“All right, Rafe,” said the voice at Nautilus's shoulder. “You earned yourself a double bonus tonight. Drop the ramps and let's get this circus to another town.”

Nautilus said, “Crandell, right?”

“Stay relaxed and we'll all go home tonight.”

Like hell,
Nautilus thought.

Headlights filled the scene as another vehicle slowed, a couple teen guys in an old Camaro with a bad muffler.

“Sssssh,” Crandell said to Nautilus, leaning to hide the gun. “One word and the kiddies don't get any older.”

“Y'all need some help?” the passenger in the Camaro said.

Private Security smiled, shook his head at the Crown Vic. “Thanks, man, but we got her. Tranny stripped out in second gear. We'll get 'er up on the trailer, haul it to the garage. Hey, you guys want a beer?”

The guy in the Camaro waved it off. “Thanks, bud, but we're set.” He held up a six-pack of Schlitz Malt Liquor, grinned stupidly, and the pair roared away.

Private Security hustled to the back of the hauler, dropped the ramp to the road. That was all the time it took for Crandell to have Harry Nautilus on the rear floor of the cruiser, handcuffed to a steel D-ring.

“And before I forget…” Crandell slipped his hand into Nautilus's jacket and snatched out his Glock.

“And a shotgun, too?” Crandell said, pulling the weapon from the seat rack. “My, we did come prepared, didn't we?”

Private Security jumped in the door, backed up the Crown Vic, angled it, then ran the Crown Vic onto the hauler. He slipped a chrome .44 revolver from his belt, set it in his lap.

“What next?” he asked Crandell.

“Stay in there and keep an eye on our company. You'll have to lay across the seats, stay below the windows.”

“No problem.” Private Security nodded at Nautilus. “What do I do if he acts up?”

Crandell thought a moment, said, “Put one in his knee.”

Lightning flashed on the horizon. Nautilus felt the wind shift direction. It suddenly smelled of rain. Private Security lowered his voice to a whisper.

“I hate cops and I hate niggers. I do believe you're gonna act up once we get under way.”

Nautilus felt a cold squirming in the pit of his stomach. Crandell leaned in the open passenger window.

“You're going to behave, right, Detective?”

“I doubt it'll mean much,” Nautilus said.

“You'll be good to our guest, Rafe?”

Private Security chuckled. “Unless he acts up, like you said.”

“Detective Nautilus, I want you to turn to Rafe and promise you'll be a good boy.” The jab with the barrel again.

Nautilus craned his head upward to the leering face of Private Security. Lightning exploded and a small dark dot appeared in Private Security's forehead. He frowned, waved at something in front of his face, like he was troubled by a fly, then slumped sideways in the seat.

Nautilus looked to the window. He smelled burned gunpowder and saw a smile on Crandell's face. Crandell reached in with the gun.

Lightning exploded inside Harry Nautilus's head.

 

Climbing through the hatch in the ceiling of the elevator was easier than I expected, relying on arm and shoulder strength rather than my ankle. I was hobbling around atop the box. The ceilings in the house were fourteen feet high, the elevator eight. Combined with the space between floors, it put the second floor a foot above my head, a second set of doors to outwit.

I had no leverage, and even if I did, no way to apply it.

I held on to greasy cables to keep the weight off my foot, trying to make sense of a metallic cocktail of bars and springs, gears and latches. My only light was from below, beaming weakly through the two-foot-square hatch.

I studied the assemblage beside the door and above my head.
Think. Analyze. Deconstruct.
Elevator doors would be inoperable unless the car was safely behind the door, or folks would be dropping down shafts with metronomic frequency.

But would the unlocking mechanism be electronic or mechanical? How did elevator repairmen deal with these situations?

I squatted below the mechanism, pushed upward on one leg, grabbed a steel bar hooked to the door, and pulled myself up until I was staring into greasy metal components. I studied the mechanism holding them shut, saw a servomotor beside the bar holding the door. There was a red button on its side, just the size of my thumb. I pressed it.

Bing.
The doors withdrew.

Soft yellow light drifted into the elevator shaft. I pulled myself through the opening. My chest crossed the threshold, then my belly, and finally the whole of me was squirming facedown on the floor. I could hear the pain in my ankle, a high red whine. I forced myself to look down: swollen with fluid.

“Hello?” a wavering voice said.

The old man was sitting at the desk as if he'd never moved from it, a strained look on his face, trying to understand my appearance in his world. I crawled to a leather-upholstered chair, pulled myself to standing, hopped to his desk.

“Phone!” I yelled. “Where's a phone?”

He stared at me like I was a life-form never before encountered, his mouth opening and closing like a boated fish. A floor lamp stood behind the desk. I hobbled over and tore off the shade, used the pole as a crutch to the window. Barred, the glass threaded with wire.

I turned and saw Daddy Kincannon at the open shaft, looking down with a sense of wonder.

“Get back from there, Pops!” I yelled.

He shuffled his feet backward in a decrepit moonwalk. I thumped past chairs and tables and love seats to the chimney, too narrow. The old man sat on a couch and picked up a copy of
Forbes
. He held it upside down, occasionally shooting me puzzled glances above the pages.

A small bedroom was off the sprawling main living area. I tore through a closet, not knowing what I was looking for, finding nothing but casual clothes and robes. No, there in a back corner, a cane! An old man's bentwood cane, leather handle, rubber tip. Maybe the old guy had bouts of gout.

Think. Analyze.

The old man had been there fifteen years, or was it twenty? Surely in all that time someone had planned for an emergency, fire, tornadoes. This was the Prime Buck, numero uno, tucked away but provided exceptional care. Had he ever been prepared for a problem, drilled until the response lodged in his frizzled brain cells?

“There's an emergency, Mr. Kincannon,” I yelled. “Is there a way out?”

He wiped a strand of drool from his mouth. I thumped across the floor, got down on one knee, took his hand in mine, like I was proposing marriage.

“What do you do for fire, sir? Have you been told?”

He looked at me with expectant eyes, like I was judging his answer and he wanted a passing grade.

“Sir?” I prompted.

“Hot spots and piss pots. Climb inside, hide and ride.”

Piss pots?

I thudded to the bathroom. It was the size of my living room: bath tub, Jacuzzi, multiheaded shower. I yanked open a closet. Empty, the size of a phone booth. I smelled rain and warmth, outside air. It seemed to be wafting up from the floor of the closet. I stepped inside, hands patting the walls. My fingers found a wooden latch. I turned it and began falling, a controlled drop. I heard a counterweight rising with my descent.

Not a closet, a converted dumbwaiter.

The booth slammed hard and I crumpled, boxed tight, surrounded by total darkness. I pushed on the sides of the booth. A door popped loose like a hatch and I found myself with a faceful of the azalea bush concealing the small door. Lightning flashed, a bomb burst of white across the vast rolling carpet of lawn. The house loomed above. I pictured Buck Senior returning to his desk, reading an inverted magazine, vaguely recalling a limping visitor from years ago.

I crept from an azalea bank the size of a truck, rain pelting me like stones. My ankle felt like white-hot thorns had been driven through it from every angle. Lightning shimmered between boiling clouds and I saw Kincannon's house in the distance, perhaps a third of a mile. It seemed forever far away.

But I'd just been granted a reprieve, and whether it had been through pure luck, or something underlying the realm of language and human capacity to understand, I was going to get there if I had to drag myself every inch. Knock on the door of the goddamn
scion
of that goddamn family.

Hello, Buckie, remember me?

Nautilus awoke to a roar in his ears and the smell of blood and excrement in his nose. His head ached and something dry filled his mouth. A gag, he figured, consciousness swirling into his head on a blaze of fear and adrenaline.

He was still tight to the floor of the Crown Vic, moving. Occasionally the interior of the car brightened from lightning or passing cars. Private Security slumped sideways, head between the front seats, trails of blood draining from his nostrils. Rain whipped in the open passenger window. Nauseated, dizzy, his head throbbing, Nautilus still managed to figure that was how the extra water had filled the floor of Taneesha's car.

The truck slowed and turned and the ride became bumpy, like on a rutted dirt road. After a few minutes they stopped. Nautilus heard Crandell get out of the truck. The dark turned to a hazy light.

Crandell opened the door, freed Nautilus from the D-ring, reattached the cuffs, the weapon never straying from Nautilus's head.

“End of the line,” Crandell said, yanking tape from Nautilus's mouth, followed by a wadded rag. Nautilus gasped, sucked in air, his tongue dry as sandpaper. He looked out the cruiser's windows.

They were inside a barn, yellowed utility lights casting shadows across bales of hay, an ancient tractor, and a miniature backhoe. Beside the backhoe's bucket was a trough seven feet long, three wide. A mound of fresh dirt was piled beside the ditch.

Lightning flickered outside the barn, doors open at one end, thunder hitting seconds later. Crandell jumped to the ground. “Step on out, Detective Nautilus. Sorry about your head. It was a light tap, you've been out under ten minutes.”

Nautilus looked at the ditch, then at Crandell, polo-shirted, hands in the pockets of his Dockers, muscles rippling in his forearms as he jingled coins in his pocket, looking like he'd just finished an excellent supper.

Nautilus said, “Why should I get up just to lay down in the hole in the ground?”

“Because ends can come fast, or they can come slow. I have an hour or so to kill—pardon the pun—and it can be a fast hour for you, or it could be agonizingly slow. If I put a couple slugs in your hip bones, I guarantee it could feel like days. Do you really want to spend days with me, Detective?”

Crandell popped open a utility room at the side of the barn, pulled out two wooden folding chairs, snapped them open, set them beside the trough.

“How'd you know I was coming, Crandell?” Nautilus said, looking at the thick barn rafters above. “Someone tip you off?”

“Shuttles did.”

“What?”

“You're a star, big boy. Celebrated member of the MPD, big-shot detective. You and Ryder got reps of going against the grain, hot dogs. But you always get 'er done, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Before all this got set in motion, Shuttles and me worked out a simple code to ID the potential problem types. A person's initials plus a letter. F'rinstance if it was Ryder, the code was DS. What's Harry Nautilus?”

“IO,” Nautilus said. “Like in the note Shuttles had me send you. IO was in there two times.”

“Shuttles is a bright boy.”

Crandell gestured to the chairs he'd set up on the barn floor beside the trench. “Come keep me company, Harry,” he smiled. “Who knows what might happen?”

Nautilus wriggled his back against the seat, felt the hard shell of the leather holster in his waistband. The .380 was unbuckled; if he could knock it loose of the holster…He struggled from the cruiser, hands cuffed at his waist.

Crandell jumped up on the flatbed, pulled Private Security out, slipping under the body, steadying it on his shoulders. He jumped the four feet from the trailer to the ground, his knees bending but not collapsing. Power-lifter strength, Nautilus noted as he stumbled down the ramp to the ground.

Crandell went to the trough, shouldered the body into the earth. It landed with a thud. He whisked his hands together as if the guy had been dusty.

“Seven feet deep,” Crandell said. “What happens is I fill in the hole later, dump your car in a big ol' swamp-hole in the delta, then return the backhoe to Buck's spread about ten miles down the pike. It's gonna storm all night….” Crandell raised his eyebrows, waiting for Nautilus to catch his drift.

“And barns get struck by lightning,” Nautilus said. As if cued by a Hollywood director, a lightning flash lit the barn. Rain dripped through the roof, pooled in the dirt.

“Old wood, all this hay. It'll collapse into a big pile, and no one will ever know what's sitting in the basement, so to speak. I do love a good fire.”

Nautilus shrugged. “Seems like a waste of a good barn.”

“The property is owned by the Kincannons, but not used. Not used much, I should say. Sometimes Buck'll bring someone here.”

“He have barn dances?”

“If that's what you want to call it. He brought a blind girl here a couple weeks ago. I been keeping extra tabs on Buck, and by the time I got here, the lady was about danced out.”

Nautilus recalled Carson's story about the blind girl who'd been savaged.

“Why'd Buck Kincannon take her to the hospital?”

“He didn't. I figured her as more trouble dead than alive. Not like she's gonna make anyone from a lineup. So I washed her up real good and made her somebody else's problem.”

Nautilus nodded. He frowned across the floor at the shadowy trench. “My partner down there?”

“Not yet.”

“Will I see him tonight? Alive, I mean.”

Crandell paused as thunder shivered the barn. “That would mean leaving you here by yourself. Even if you're trussed tight, I can't take that risk. Come have a seat, Harry. Get comfortable. I've made it easier.”

Nautilus studied the rickety wood chairs Crandell had set beside the trench. They faced one another from a six-foot distance. Crandell's chair was two steps away; he could head-butt the bastard. Nautilus visualized the moment: roaring, diving, wiping everything from his mind save that his head was a battering ram. He had teeth, too. Use everything. Do a Tyson on Crandell's ear. Or bite one of his eyes out.

Harry Nautilus sat.

Crandell picked up his chair, folded it shut. He walked to the far side of the ditch beside the dirt mound and reopened the chair. He sat, smiling with his teeth.

“You didn't really think I was going to sit across from you without a moat, did you, Harry? And by the way, if you're still a bit dizzy to notice…”

Crandell reached in his pocket, pulled out Nautilus's .380, letting it dangle by the trigger guard.

It's over,
Harry Nautilus realized, listening to the rain drumming the roof of the barn.
I'm being written out of the Big Play.
He was amazed at how little fear he felt. Only a sense of sorrow that his death would be at the hands of a sociopathic subhuman like Crandell.

Nautilus had never romanticized dying in the line of duty. He figured it would be nice to eat a grand meal, drink a few ounces of hundred-buck-a-bottle scotch, put on Duke Ellington playing “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo,” then shut his eyes and fly away as the muted horn closes the song.

And be a hundred and ten years old at the time.

Nautilus shot a glance into the trench, one of Private Security's arms flung above his up-looking head and propped against the trench wall like he was trying to backstroke through the earth. Though the night was hot, Nautilus shivered at the thought of his meat rotting into that of a malignant peckerwood.

But Carson would be in the grave as well, Nautilus suddenly realized. They'd outflank the peckerwood.

“Jesus, was that a grin?” Crandell asked.

Nautilus didn't answer. But had a few questions of his own.

“My partner saw Carole Ann Hibney at the Shrine Temple, Crandell. What was she doing there?”

“You mean Mistress Sonia? You'd have to know the Kincannon boys. They're playful, in their own way. Buck needs an occasional visit to a Mistress Sonia type to level out or something. I don't pretend to understand. The boys try and keep tabs on one another.”

“You mean like spying.”

“It's a grand family tradition. Nelson found out about Mistress Sonia, paid her a couple thousand to show up at the party.”

“To do what?”

Crandell's eyes danced with glee. “Simply walk silently in front of Buck and pretend to crack a whip. Nelson convinced leather lady it was Buck's birthday party, and Buck had requested Mistress Sonia do the gig, as an inside joke. Nelson knew it'd about make Buck crap his pants, his mama by his side as Whip Woman walked past.”

Nautilus felt the bottom drop from his stomach. “Buck didn't think it was funny, obviously. So he took it out on Carole Ann. Do you have any idea what your employer did to her, Crandell?”

Crandell shrugged. “This is my last job for the Kincannons. Buck's getting worse. The wrappings are about to tear loose.”

“Pity. I'll bet you've made a shitload off the family over the years.”

“Enough to retire on. I only came back to put a little extra gravy on the taters, so to speak.”

“Not out of a perverse loyalty? Help in their time of need?”

Crandell wagged an admonishing finger at Nautilus. “Loyalty is not a word the Kincannons understand. If they were sure they'd never need me again, I'd be dead.”

“They'd Crandell their Crandell. Where would it stop?”

“I don't want to know. That's why I'm checking out and heading to Rio. Time for me to learn to samba.”

A cell phone rang from Crandell's jacket. He slipped it from the pocket of his blazer, looked at the incoming number and winced. He put the phone to his ear.

“What, Race?”

Crandell stood and walked to the shadows in the corner of the barn.

“What the hell are you talking about? How the hell did you get that idea? It's fucking ridiculous. No, don't call Nelson. Here's what you do, open another bottle of scotch, call one of your girlfriends over, relax. What? Racine, calm down, buddy.”

Crandell flicked the phone off, stuck it back in his pocket. When he returned, he was holding a semiautomatic aimed at Nautilus's heart. Crandell looked at Nautilus and sighed.

“Dealing with this family truly is herding cats, Harry. Racine's drunk and babbling about how I'm fired or something. Typical. I'm sorry to cut our evening short. If you come stand here at the head of the ditch I'll make it clean, you won't feel a thing.”

Nautilus took a deep breath and spat across the trench, his spit falling short, landing on Crandell's loafers.

“Game to the end,” Crandell said, cocking the weapon. “I like a man with spirit. But if you don't get up here, I'm gonna put one through your knee.”

Nautilus laughed. It was real and full. “You're a sick and sad little boy, Crandell. I expect I can deal with it.”

Crandell stared in disbelief. He shook his head and raised the weapon, finger curling around the trigger.

Three hard reports echoed through the barn.

Crandell seemed to lift from his feet for a split-second. He staggered three steps backward, slammed into the wall of the utility room, then crumpled to the ground. The weapon tumbled into the ditch.

Nautilus stared wide-eyed at the dark. Lightning flashed and he saw a man crouched at the edge of the door. There was a gun in his hand, the muzzle scanning the barn's interior.

“Racine?” Nautilus called. “Racine Kincannon?”

Pace Logan rounded the corner, his service weapon trained on Crandell's writhing form. He crept to Nautilus.

“Jesus, Harry. What'd you get yourself into? Who's that crazy fuck? Who's Racine?”

Nautilus sat with his mouth agape, unable to find words. He stood, and his head swam and his knees wobbled. He sat down again. Logan advanced toward the supine Crandell, who was moaning, rocking side to side, the front of his shirt turning to a scarlet swamp.

Nautilus managed a breathless whisper. “What the hell are you doing here, Pace?”

“You sounded bad worried when you told me how you were looking for a curly-haired blond guy Shuttles might have met up with.” Logan nodded toward Crandell. “Him?”

“Him.”

“It got me started thinking. You know Dominick Purselli was Shuttles's training officer?”

Nautilus said, “I tried to talk to Dom a couple days ago. He's way the hell up in Canada.”

“Dom Purselli's a good buddy of mine,” Logan said. “I had his cell number, called, got lucky. I asked had he ever seen the guy you described. Turns out that when Shuttles joined the force, the two of 'em did some stuff together. Shuttles told Purselli he knew a guy came to town now and then, always stayed at this old farm on about thirty acres, would Purselli like to go squirrel hunting there?”

Crandell's mouth opened and closed like a dying fish gulping air from the surface. His eyes rolled back in his head. Logan knelt and put a finger against Crandell's throat, feeling for a pulse.