Stranger in the Room: A Novel (4 page)

I dumped my things on my desk and looked up at Neil’s back through squares in wire fencing. He was in the new black-and-nickel Aeron desk chair he’d just dropped a thousand bucks on. It looked like something out of a futuristic survival movie.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Didn’t I ask politely enough? Good morning, Neil, you beautiful man.
Please
get me the goddamn Inman Park property owners.”

“Oh yeah. Much better.” He tapped at his keyboard while I explained what happened at Miki’s, the break-in. A few minutes later the volume on the morning news faded.

“It’s on-screen,” Neil said. “Want some coffee? I do.”

“Oh, you
are
a beautiful man. I’d love some.” I left my office to see satellite images of Miki’s neighborhood. Property owners’ names appeared on each lot with the house number. Neil handed me a hot cup. It smelled amazing. I peered down at something reddish and foamy.

Coffee in all its variety is a sort of subspecialty for Neil. He’s as shrewd as an international coffee buyer when he shops for beans. I’ve seen him grab a handful and bring them to his nose and close his eyes. He studies the color and texture and pops them in his mouth like peanuts. They tell him a story—wet-processed, shade grown or light, single origin or blended. Different beans, then different grinds for different days and different moods.

“Let’s start with the three houses on each side of Miki, everyone across the street, and the closest neighbors behind her.”

“That’s, like, thirty people.”

“You have something more pressing?” I handed him the cocktail napkin on which I’d scribbled Cash Tilison’s name. “One of Miki’s boyfriends. She claims he stalked her.”

“ ‘Claims’?”

“It’s Miki.” I shrugged. “She’s making a list of the others.”

Neil returned to his desk and fell into his chair. He then sighed loudly. I watched the back of his head for a few seconds. Something was bugging him. And he obviously wanted me to know.

“So, you have plans for the big Independence Day weekend?” It was awkward, but it was the best I could do.

“I think I’m in love.” He said it flatly, in the disenchanted voice of a man who’d just realized he was going bald. “With two women.”

I took a sip of coffee. “Well, then I guess you’re twice as likely to have plans. This coffee is delicious, by the way.”

He looked at me as if I’d just told him Santa was dead.

“What?”

“I guess I was hoping for some advice or something, Keye. I mean, this is kinda huge.”

“Oh. Okay. Just give me a minute to recall my experiences as a heterosexual man.
Hmm
. Nope. Nothing’s coming to mind.”

“You’re an ass,” he said, but he was fighting off a smile.

“I was just afraid you were going to tell me you’re becoming a leather daddy or something. Everyone else in my life seems to have some kind of sexual identity crisis. I swear to God if Rauser ever tells me he’s gay, I’m going to drink antifreeze.”

“Wow. This was so not supposed to be about you.” Neil threw up his hands.

“Awww. Do you need to talk about your feelings? Come here, you.”

I made kissing sounds and tried to get my arms around him. Laughing, he held me off. We were close to a full-on wrestling match when the phone rang. Neil told the smart panel to switch the call to speakers. He had made our office his playground for electronics. Audio boomed from every corner of our super-wired office space. He adjusted the volume.

“Keye, it’s Larry Quinn. How’s my favorite detective? Hey, I got a job for you up north. Nice little resort area. You free?”

“It depends,” I said, and winked at Neil. “I don’t trust you, Larry.”

Quinn chuckled. “It’s nothing like the cow thing, Keye. There’s almost no chance you can get yourself arrested.”

Last year Larry Quinn had hired me to find a family pet in rural
North Georgia. Okay, it was a missing cow named Sadie. I’d gained ten pounds on fried pies, which is apparently all they eat up there unless you count gravy, gotten arrested, and taken to jail in the back of the Gilmer County sheriff’s car with a cow thief who’d smelled like poo.

“It’s up in Creeklaw County,” Quinn said. “Southern Appalachians. Little town called Big Knob near the North Carolina line. You know it?”

“Um … no.”

Neil made a childish reference to the town’s name by first grabbing himself, then spreading his arms the length of a yardstick. I did a lot of overt eye rolling to prove I was above this primitive level.

“There’s a married couple up there with an interesting story. Fella named Billy Wade drops an urn containing the ashes of his deceased mother. Well, what fell out didn’t look like ashes. The Wades had an independent laboratory analyze the contents. Cement mix with some chicken feed.”

“Uh
-huh
.”

“Naturally, they want to know what happened to the real ashes.”

“Naturally.” They probably also wanted to sue the shit out of someone. I didn’t say that. “So why not just ask the crematory operator?”

“That’s just it,” Quinn answered. “They did. Several times. The owner, one Joe Ray Kirkpatrick, dodged their calls for a couple days, then finally offers a big apology, says an employee spilled and contaminated the ashes and filled the urn with cement mix to protect his job and spare the family the pain of lost remains. Kirkpatrick says he dismissed the man at once. He also reimbursed the Wades for
all
their funeral expenses, not just the cremation.”

“So what’s the problem?” I found a pen and wrote a note—
Joe Ray Kirkpatrick
. We had access to databases that would give us the skinny on the crematory operator in no time flat, and what our paid-for access wouldn’t get us, Neil was perfectly capable of finding on his own.

“They smell a rat, Keye,” Larry Quinn told me. “And I do too.”

And a big settlement.

“So why not call the cops?” I asked.

“They did. Kirkpatrick reimbursed the Wades for all their funeral expenses. Cops don’t see it as a civil matter at this point. The cops may also be in this guy’s pocket.”

“So the Wades called you.”

“And here I am,” Quinn said. “Keye, these poor people are distraught. Billy’s mama wanted her ashes sprinkled in the ocean. Now that family doesn’t have a pot to piss in. The whole county is in the bottom tier in the state as far as income and education.” Quinn was getting breathy and worked up. I’d seen him like this at depositions, when he sensed deceit. “Nowhere to work but in service. Golf courses. Big lake. Lot of division between the haves and have-nots. But the Wades were about to take off work, which they can’t afford, and drive seven hours from Big Knob to the coast, pay to charter a boat just to toss a bunch of cement mix into the Atlantic.”

“And chicken feed,” I added.

“That’s right. And chicken feed, for God’s sake.” Larry chuckled. “How would you feel?”

“Lord knows.”

“See what I mean?”

“And you just want to help,” I said. “What a guy.”

“That’s exactly right,” Quinn agreed, and I could tell he was smiling that big smile that was famous on Atlanta television.
Make one call before the fall
, he’d say in that Old South accent, and point at the camera.

“So, what’s up with the chicken feed?”

“According to the owner,” Larry told me, “this person stored the bag of cement mix he intended to use in the urn with the chicken feed. There was a spill and it ended up getting mixed together somehow.”

“Chickens? At a crematory?”

“Fried chicken,” Neil muttered.

“Look, Keye, the point is the ashes weren’t ashes.”

“Yeah, I get it. And I still want to know why there are chickens at a crematory.”

Quinn sighed, as if his detective shouldn’t pester him with questions. “Well, the way I understand it is it’s a little farm. Sixteen acres. It’s actually a good thing the chicken feed got mixed up in there or nobody would have noticed. Cement mix looks pretty much like cremated human remains. Or so I’ve been told.”

I thought about the blown weekend planned with Rauser. I thought
about the desserts my mother would have on the long picnic table in their Winnona Park backyard—deep-dish blackberry cobbler, sweet-potato cheesecake, banana cream pie. Then I imagined what she’d say when I walked in alone.
Keye, bless your little heart. You have always been attracted to the kind of man who would leave you all alone on a holiday
.

“This weekend might be a great time to catch people at home,” I told Larry. “I’ll do it. Email me contact info on the Wades and the crematory’s sneaky employee.”

“That’s another thing fishy about this guy. The Wades claim folks up there don’t remember any employees since the father died and the son took over the business a couple of years ago. Kirkpatrick says he doesn’t have a way to get in touch with the man. Hispanic, no green card. Says he was paying him under the table.”

“Illegals have names too, Larry.”

“Not this one.”

I disconnected and stood leaning against the kitchen counter with my coffee cup in my hand. “That was totally weird,” Neil said, and switched back to his morning news program.

“Tell me about it.”

“Think you’ll have to see dead people?”

I took a last drink of red foamy coffee and left my cup on the counter. “I hope not.”

“Yeah, that would be creepy.” Neil tossed his head to get the bangs away from his eyes. “Can I go?”

“Seriously?”

“I need to get away.”

I grinned at him. “You made plans with
both
of them, didn’t you?”

“It was an accident.”

“And now you’re just going to stand both women up and run away?”

“Pretty much.”

I grabbed a soft leather file bag with a shoulder strap and stuffed it full. “I’m going to drop off some background reports and pick up a job from Tyrone. I have my phone.” I glanced down at it and saw a new email had arrived. Miki’s list of six men she’d dated in two years. Four in the United States, two in Europe—the complications or benefits of traveling for a living. I forwarded the list to Neil’s mailbox.

“Bring some food back, would ya?” Neil asked. He’d cleaned out whatever supplies we had in the refrigerator and cabinets, and resorted to eating one of those sample boxes of cereal that arrived in the mail. We were out of milk too, but he poured the cereal in a bowl anyway and ate it with a spoon.

“You know,” I said, “this problem is easily solved by grocery shopping. It’s way past your turn.”

“You look hot this morning.”

I was wearing a light heather blazer and skirt with a chocolate tank, a simple brown pump. Okay, so a simple pump from Louboutin meant a week’s salary. But they were gorgeous. I kind of wanted to lick them. I kissed the top of Neil’s head. “Flattery will not get me to the grocery store.”

“A pox upon you.” He said it with a wave of his arm like a Shakespearean actor. “And your trashy little cat too.”

His eyes drifted up to the television. Something in the way his expression changed made me follow them. I saw Rauser on the screen in the jeans I’d watched him peel off in my bedroom a few hours ago. Crime scene tape flickered in the foreground. Lights from police cruisers reflected off cars and dark streets. They were replaying a live shot from Rauser’s crime scene last night.
News trucks are here. I love ya, Street
. Med techs with a gurney from the ME’s office backed awkwardly out of a row of shrubs. Frank Loutz, the Fulton County medical examiner, followed the techs and the gurney out of the shrubbery. Loutz leaned in close to speak to Rauser, covered his mouth with his clipboard like an NFL coach on Sunday hiding his plays from the lip-readers. The reporter informed us grimly that a child had been found dead by a jogger. Cause of death had not been made official, but circumstances were suspicious. We were shown the moment the child’s mother stumbled on the scene—her screaming, breaking through scene tape, barreling toward the ME techs, running with a mother’s certainty that it was her son on the gurney. I lowered myself onto one of the leather sectionals scattered around the office and stared up at the television as the horror unfolded.

Homicide Detective Linda Bevins leapt in front of the shrieking woman like a professional goalie. I knew Bevins. She was a good cop. The woman was crying, arguing, hands flailing. Bevins held her
shoulders, said something. The woman seemed too heartsick to keep standing. She dissolved into the pavement.

I thought about what the next few days would be like for her. This grieving woman, the family, friends, schoolmates, the detectives and techs, the unnamed jogger who stumbled over the lifeless body of a murdered child—they all would be altered in a hundred different ways, large and small, irrevocably.

Raised voices and loud noises had been my trigger.
Where’s the money, old man? Give us the fucking money
. Then gunshots. Me shivering behind the counter. As a child, I carried the scars to new parents, who found themselves with a brooding, remote little girl. An intricate kind of dominoing takes place in one’s life after murder’s big net tangles you up. It goes on for years.

The gurney was pushed into the back of the ME’s van. There would be a counselor on the scene soon to help deal with the collateral damage—traumatic stress, the depression and disbelief that would tear apart everyone who loved the boy. The parents would have a blur of questions coming at them, questions that would anger and bewilder them. The detectives would be chomping at the bit to exclude them as suspects as quickly as possible. The grief counselors would show up and do their best. But nothing would ever return to the kind of normal it had once been for that boy’s family.

The camera moved to Rauser. I felt Neil’s hand on my shoulder. We watched Rauser help Detective Bevins pull the mother up off the ground and get her into a vehicle, away from the pitiless television lights. He tried to move past the cameras, but the reporter intercepted him. “Lieutenant Rauser, can you tell us anything about the murdered child?”

Microphones stabbed up in his face. His square jaw flexed under a stubbly charcoal shadow, gray eyes passed over the camera. If anyone had seen or heard anything suspicious in the vicinity of Kings Court and Amsterdam, he asked that they call. He gave out the main number at APD, then ducked back under the scene tape.