A Garden of Vipers (10 page)

In return, he introduced me to jazz and blues. When we first started hanging out, he asked my musical influences, shaking his head at most. He'd pulled a vinyl of Louis Armstrong from its jacket, set it on the turntable, dropped the needle on a 1929 rendition of the W. C. Handy tune “St. Louis Blues.” It was like nothing I'd ever heard, bright and alive and flowing like a stream, and I was a convert before sixteen bars had passed.

“Let me put on some tunes,” Harry said, kneeling by a stack of vinyls beside his sound system, his sole luxury, eight grand worth of electronics. Ferdinand La Menthe—better known as Jelly Roll Morton—started a piano solo in Harry's living room.

Harry handed me a beer. I sat cross-legged on his living room floor, Bernie Rudolnick's professional life surrounding me in white boxes. It might have been a breach of doctor-patient privilege to have such records, and I was uncertain of the legalities. We weren't about to ask, ignorance being, if not bliss, at least more comfortable than knowing we were in violation of something or other. Thus we had taken the records to Harry's instead of the department.

Harry said, “How about I unbox, unbundle, and stack each box's contents in its own area, and you check what's inside?”

I shot a thumbs-up and surveyed materials at random. Harry grabbed a couple of beers to set by our sides. Having spent a fair portion of my six-year college career in the psych department, I was familiar with the language and methodology involved in Rudolnick's materials.

“What are we looking for?” Harry said. “There's a half ton of files here.”

“Anything pertaining to Leland Harwood. Or the penal system, halfway house, prison or jail consultations. We're casting a wide net.”

Harry studied the mountain of boxes. He made a sound like wounded bagpipes.

Harry and I studied records until our eyes crossed, about four hours. I ran home, grabbed some sleep, was back at it in the morning, coffee replacing the beer. After two hours Harry tossed a pile of pages on the floor.

“I can't take shrink-jarg for four hours at a stretch. Let's go beat the streets.”

I rubbed my eyes, stretched my back.

“How about we divide up what's left, work on it solo every day. Half hour minimum. We'll get through it in a week to ten days.”

We beat the streets, reinterviewing everyone in Taneesha's phone book, talking to her family, tracking down our snitches to offer money for anything they could dig up. At five we headed home. My path took me a few miles out of my way, passing by Dani's place on the edge of downtown.

Her car wasn't in the driveway. I walked to her porch and rang the bell. There was no response, and I considered letting myself in with my key and waiting.

“Carson?” I heard my name called in a quavering female voice. I turned to see Leanna Place, Dani's elderly next-door neighbor. She gestured me over like I was a servant.

“Come over, Carson. Look what's here.”

I sighed, not in the mood for Ms. Place. She thought dating a cop was too coarse for Dani, below her station. Ms. Place always pretended to be solicitous of my health and welfare, all the while launching small, backhanded missiles.

I followed her inside her tidy home. Beside the threshold was a huge vase of flowers. At least I assumed a vase was beneath the explosion of color and scent. Roses and tulips and carnations reached to my waist.

“It's for DeeDee,” Ms. Place said. Like most, she used Dani's television name. “The flowers came an hour ago. DeeDee wasn't home so I took the delivery. Aren't they gorgeous?” She gave me a wry eyebrow. “I wonder who they're from.”

It rankled that the old shrew thought me incapable of sending flowers.

“Me, maybe?”

She fluffed the blooms like a pillow, then tapped the small envelope wagging from the vase. “The flowers are from Jon-Ella's, Carson. I'd guess three hundred dollars' worth. Not something one gets on a
policeman's
salary.”

Jon-Ella's was Mobile's most hoity-toity florist, over in Spring Hill. I once priced a half dozen roses at Jon-Ella's, gasped, got them at Winn-Dixie for a quarter of the price.

I avoided telling Ms. Place that euthanasia's not such a bad idea and toted the flowers back to Dani's. I let myself in, set the massive arrangement on her dining room table. The sender's card fluttered before my eyes, a small dot of tape holding it closed.

I left it untouched.

I made it all the way to the bottom of the porch steps before turning back. The tape peeled loose with ease and I slid the card from the envelope to my sweating palm.

I left the flowers in the small vestibule outside the front door, where a delivery person would set them. I don't remember driving home.

 

I was sitting on my deck in the dark, clothing optional this time of night, nearing midnight. The wind had picked up, a hot breath keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Far across the water a drill rig flamed off gas, orange fire pressing indigo sky. There was a high whine in the back of my head.

My dining room table was filled with my half of Rudolnick's files. I'd put in a half hour of reviewing, pushed them away, come outside to think about nothing, Dani included.

My cell phone rang from the table beside me. Dani, her voice a tight whisper.

“Carson, I think someone's been in my house.”

“A break-in? Are the cops there?”

A hesitation. “I didn't call them.”

“Why not?”

“It's that there's no…that is, the alarm didn't go off.”

“Where'd they get in? Door? Window?”

“It's not that there's actually, uh…I'm scared, Carson. That much I know. Can you come over?”

When I pulled to the curb in front of Dani's house, I saw her at the window, backlit, the curtain pushed aside. Her outline was hauntingly beautiful, and I felt an ache simultaneously within me and far away. She opened the door as I stepped to the porch.

“Thanks for coming so fast.”

I brushed past and left her hug hanging in the air. Her front closet held the alarm center. No lights were flashing to indicate a breach.

“You haven't reset anything, have you?” I asked. “Moved the parameters higher?” The detection modes were set to thresholds so the system didn't dial cops every time mail dropped through the door slot.

She shook her head. “Haven't touched it.”

“No windows open, doors unlatched?”

“No.”

“Might I ask why you think someone's been inside?”

She beckoned me to follow her upstairs. Passing her bedroom, I glanced inside. An unmade bed, the covers a tangle, a big tangle.

It seemed I could smell flowers coming from the room.

Dani led me to her office, shelves of books and magazines, a couple of billowing ferns beside the window, a ceiling fan. The space was centered by a large teakwood desk. There was a credenza behind it, a chair between them. She pointed an accusatory finger at the chair.

“Someone was at my desk.”

“How do you know?”

She sat, turned to the computer monitor. “I touch-type about seventy-five words a minute. I focus on the screen, watch the words. Because I never take my eyes away, everything's set up to grab it efficiently. Like a blind person, maybe. Watch.”

She opened a blank screen, began typing, her eyes riveted to the monitor. I stood beside her and watched the words race across the screen.

Her hand reached out to a mug of pencils. Two inches past her fingertips. She drew her hand back, kept typing.

She reached. This time her hand was an inch or so to the right.

Her hand swung behind her, fingernails tapping the edge of the credenza, the PDA a book's-width away. She turned to me.

“See?”

“Maybe you were having an off day. About an inch off. I'm not trying to be funny.”

“I've been working like this for eight years. My office at the station is set up the same way. Someone was here, moving things.”

“You've checked your files? Anything missing?”

She opened the bottom desk drawer. A few hanging folders, scant pages in them. “Nothing I can see. No active stories. No names of people or companies being investigated, no secret meetings, no incriminating papers. All I have are outdated notes. What should I do?”

I cleared my throat. “There's no evidence someone's been in here. It's based on…ergonomics.”

Her pink nails clacked on the credenza. “You don't believe me, do you?”

“I'm not sure what I believe anymore, Dani.”

She frowned. “That's a strange thing to say, Carson.”

“Where are the flowers, Dani?”

A pause. “What flowers?”

“You haven't seen Ms. Place, I take it? I stopped by earlier. She accepted a few hundred dollars' worth of posies. I brought them over here.”

“Uh, they're in my bedroom. They were from the station. Uh, because of me being made an anch—”

“Save yourself some lying. I read the card.”

All color drained from her face. “Carson…”

“I heard your phone message the other night, too. When did you start fucking Buck Kincannon? Recently? Or all along?”

She closed her eyes. Swayed. At that moment I would have let her fall.

“We, Buck and me…were dating before you and I met. It was over a year ago, obviously. What you're thinking, it's not…”

I mimed pulling a card from an envelope, like at an awards show. Or from a florist's delivery.

“And my final question is…”

“Please don't, Carson.”

“Have you been to bed with Buck Kincannon recently? The past month?”

Her fists balled into knots. Tears streamed down her face. “Carson,” she whispered.

“Answer me!”
I screamed.

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath.

Said, “Yes.”

“You've got some items at my house, Ms. Danbury,” I said. “I'll leave them on your porch in a day or two.”

By two-fifteen a.m. I had all Dani's possessions in a green garbage bag. I set the bag in the kitchen, but that didn't feel right, so I put it on the deck. That felt wrong, too. The same with the stoop. I finally carried it downstairs and jammed it in the little cold-water shower beneath the house.

I tried to sleep but pictures clashed in my head and feelings banged into feelings in my heart. The internal warfare kept me awake until four, when I went outside and fell asleep at the edge of the water. The sun woke me at daybreak. I stood, brushed sand from my clothes, and went inside to shower and make coffee.

Though it was barely half past six, I decided to head into the department, get a jump on the day. I was still ten miles south of Mobile when I saw a plume of smoke rising above town, a heavy smear against the crystal-blue sky. I flicked the radio to the fire band, heard the cacophonous mix of voices that indicated a bad burn.

“Jeffers here, on the east side. We've got flames from the fourth-story windows.”

“Get a hose on it.”

“All the high-volume hoses are working the south side.”

“This is Smith. We're losing pressure from the Corcoran Street hydrant. Get us a tanker, fast.”

“Jeffers. I've got a woman says there's people on the fourth. She heard screaming. Wait…I got a man at a window. Elderly. Jesus, he's getting ready to—”

I stuck the flasher on the roof, pushed the accelerator to the floor, aimed the truck at the plume.

Eight minutes later I was weaving through the crowd of gawkers at the periphery. I pulled onto the curb a block away, staying well back from the firefighters. The last thing they needed to deal with was a vehicle blocking a needed path. I flapped my badge wallet open, stuck it in my pocket, jogged toward the scene. The air was oily with the smell of smoke and steam.

I knew the place, an old apartment building, four stories, maybe a dozen units per floor. The rent was inexpensive, but not so cheap the place became a haven for junkies and derelicts. I'd been on a few calls there as a patrolman, a couple domestic beefs and picking up a hooker on a bench warrant, no big deal. Back when I was working the streets, there were one or two hookers who lived at the place, out-service types, not streetwalkers. They tended to keep low and stay out of trouble and we pretty much left them alone, having a lot worse to deal with than call girls.

I saw a firefighter buddy of mine, Captain Rawly Drummond, standing beside a truck and shedding his air tank and yellow flame-retardant coat. He shook off his gloves and wiped sweat from his forehead.

“Hey, Rawly.”

He turned, showed a smile beneath a red handlebar mustache that would have looked at home on a gold-rush prospector.

“Yo, Carson. You here to see how real civil-service types work?”

“I was looking for a doughnut joint, took a wrong turn. How's it going?”

“Tough at first, but we're getting it knocked back. Lotta combustibles in that building.”

“I caught some radio traffic. People in there?”

The mustache turned down. “Don't have a resident count, but it seems most people got out. An old guy panicked, dove from a window. Another two minutes and we could have had a ladder to him. They took him to the hospital, but it was over.”

“Any idea what caused the fire?”

“I had two guys made it, back toward the heart of the burn, the start point. They thought they caught a whiff of gasoline, even with the masks.”

“Arson.”

“Some materials put off a smell of gas when they burn, so maybe not. Still, that place was cooking when we arrived, heavy involvement on two floors, starting on a third. Asphalt from the roof was a burning river.”

The danger to surrounding structures had passed and Rawly was out of the fight, another engine company working over the active flames at the far end of the building. We shot the breeze a couple minutes, telling fishing lies combined with enough truths to keep each other off balance.

“Captain!” a guy yelled from the corner of the building. “Got a body.”

“Oh, shit,” Rawly said. He ran toward the guy and I followed. We rounded the corner. A ladder truck was beside the building. Between the truck and the structure was a body on a collapsible stretcher, two young firefighters staring at the form. Judging by their eyes, it was their first dead body. The guy who'd called Rawly over had the name
JEFFERS
printed on his helmet.

A slender guy with some years on him, Jeffers nodded toward the younger guys. “Wills and Hancock found the body, hauled it out.”

One of the firefighters said, “Maybe we should have left it. It was just that…”

The kid couldn't finish. I stared down. The corpse was charred beyond recognition, a wet briquette in semi-human shape.

Jeffers saw my badge. “You're a cop? Maybe there's a reason you're here.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Roll it over,” Jeffers said.

Faces averted, the young guys turned the corpse from supine to prone. I saw two black twigs, arms, stretching behind the dark mass.

And on what had once been wrists, handcuffs.

Rawly hunkered beside the corpse and thumbed ash from the cuffs. Underneath, they were stainless steel, a bit darkened, but still bright. The lock mechanism was sturdy, the link forged. Good cuffs, pro quality.

Rawly frowned. “I think the arson probability just jumped a notch, Carson. I'll call Forensics.”

Jeffers said, “There ain't much left of the room it was in. The body was on the third floor, but started out on the fourth. It was in a huge bed judging by the frame. It all fell through when the fire ate away the floor joists.”

“Think this'll be one of yours, Carson?” Rawly asked.

“Someone else'll get the case. My dance card's full.”

“Wanna take a look inside anyway? I can't say the area will stay secure. Too many feet stomping around.”

The fire was pretty much knocked back on our side of the building, a few rooms at the other end still spewing black smoke as firefighters aimed thick ribbons of water through the windows.

I looked at Jeffers. Said, “Lead on.” We climbed the ladder to the third floor, crept in the window past jagged teeth of glass. I pushed back my borrowed helmet and looked up and saw sky, the floor above and the roof gone.

“Stay close to the edge of the room,” Jeffers said. “The floor's bad in the middle.”

I found myself in a brick-walled box of ruination. There were bits of furniture, mostly the metal parts. I saw the melted remains of a television and computer. Near the room's center lay the twisted box springs and mattress springs of a large bed, larger than king size, it seemed, most of the fabric burned away in the center of the springs, blackened fabric at the edges.

“The body was in the middle of the bed?” I asked.

“Dead center.” He grimaced at his words, said, “Sorry.”

I studied the floor, a mess of charred flooring from above, wires, and shattered glass. I kicked at the glass. It was everywhere in the ash. I took a couple steps forward, the charred flooring crunching like ice.

“No farther,” Jeffers said, grabbing my arm.

I backpedaled. “You don't have to tell me twice.” I reached down and brushed aside detritus, lifted a piece of the ubiquitous broken glass. I blew off ash, saw my face in my hand.

“It's a mirror,” I said.

Jeffers knelt and brushed at the floor.

“A lot of mirror. Must have been a biggie.” He inched across the floor to the bed.

“The springs are full of mirror, big pieces.” Jeffers stared up at a nonexistent room. “What's that make you think, detective?”

I studied the wreckage. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw mirror fragments everywhere.

“A mirror above the bed. Or on the wall. Or both.”

“I think that answer would earn you an A+,” Jeffers said. “Seen enough?”