A Garden of Vipers (25 page)

Harry and I entered the department through the back door. Vince Raines from Auto Theft was in the hall sipping coffee and tacking a page to the bulletin board. It was in-house stuff: folks selling a car or boat or had a litter of kittens to dispense.

Vince saw us, nodded. “You guys don't need a jon boat, do you? Just put one on sale. Two years old. Cost thirty-five hundred with a ten-horse motor. Yours for twelve hundred even.”

“I got a kayak,” I said. “And an aversion to motors.”

“I got an aversion to seasickness,” Harry said.

“Just thought I'd…hey, I just got back from vacation. Mitch Burdon told me you two stopped by, were looking into something.”

“We were trying to track down some stolen cars,” Harry said.

“Find 'em?”

“Mitch checked by make and model,” Harry said. “Upscale machines that weren't in the system. Mitch thought they might have been yanked from the airport, owners still out in Hawaii or whatever.”

“Like what?” Vince asked.

“Nineteen ninety-seven Porsche turbo, 1958 Mercedes roadster, a 2004 Beamer.”

Vince's forehead wrinkled in thought. “I dunno. I got kind of a weird call last week. I was working alone. Got a call that some fancy cars were missing from a place off Highway 45. ‘Fancy,' that was the word the caller used. Went to a Quonset-type warehouse, climate-controlled, a collection of cars in storage.”

“There'd been thefts?” Harry asked.

“That's the strange part. The guy that called—a guard or something—was all worked up. Scared. He said to get there quick. I arrived about a half hour later. The guy, a big goofy hick, said it was all a mistake. His boss, the man who owns the vehicles, had sold some and the guy didn't know. So that was that.”

Harry said, “I'd sure like to take a look at this place. Mind if Carson and me became vehicle-theft cowboys for an hour?”

“Saddle up, boys. Lemme draw you a map where this place is.”

The address led us to a defunct single-runway airfield between a melon field and scrubby woods. I think the
KEEP OUT
signs outnumbered the
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
signs, but not by much. The only action nearby was an old strip mall–cum–flea market about a half mile down the road. A twelve-foot cyclone fence surrounded a gray Quonset structure, a small guardhouse in front. An industrial-size air-conditioning unit sat beside the hut, and I heard it running. The security was an electronic lock keypad that seemed to control the main gate. I saw a second keypad unit by the door of the hut, two dozen feet away.

The guardhouse looked little used: weeds growing from pavement cracks, the door half ajar. There was a phone in the guardhouse, a sign on it saying
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
,
CALL
such and such.

Harry looked at me. “You got an emergency?”

“I have to take a leak pretty bad.”

“I'll phone it in.”

Harry dialed the number. I wasn't lying, and crouched between the car and guardhouse to lose some coffee.

“Someone's on the way,” he said. “Ten minutes.”

We leaned against the Crown Vic and watched heat shimmer from the old runway. Eight minutes later a pickup truck pulled into the lot, kicking up gravel.

The driver jumped out, a heavyset guy, thirties, knock-kneed, belly drooping over a too-tight belt. His face was wide, his cheeks as red as if rouged.

“What's the emergency?” he asked, looking worried.

Harry and I flipped out the buzzers. I said, “We're following up on a report about some stolen cars.”

“That's all cleared up,” he said. “Over a week back.”

“Oh shit,” I said. “The report got filed wrong again.”

Harry slapped his forehead.

“What?” the guy said.

“We got a new girl sticking reports in the wrong box. We pick it up, see the address, head out. What happened?”

“It was a mistake. The cars got sold.”

Harry laughed, clapped his hands.

“Come on? Really?”

The guy grinned, happy to tell the story again. “See, what happens is I come by ever' morning to do a look-see. I'm s'pose to check inside, make sure the temperature and humidity are set right. I opened the door and saw empty spots where three of the cars had been. Nothin' there. I called the cops, told them. Then I called out to Mr. Kincannon's office, told his people about the cars bein' gone.”

“You mean like Buck Kincannon?” I shot Harry the eye.

“The one. Got a helluva collection of cars in there. Great to be rich, huh?”

“What happened next?”

“Mr. Kincannon came over. Buck. Mr. Nelson, too. I was outside and I heard Mr. Buck inside having a real shit fit. Just yellin' and screamin' and throwin' things. But when he come out he was smilin' and said the cars was sold a few days before and he was sorry he'd forgot to tell me. Then he took off back to work. Then the cops come about ten minutes later and I explained it all.”

“Why do you think Buck Kincannon was yelling?”

The guy shrugged; it didn't fall under his purview. “I got no idea why rich people do the way they do.”

 

We returned to the department where I filled Harry in on my recent conversation with Tyree Shuttles.

“Fixated on me?” Harry said. “Logan?”

“I don't really know what that's all about. Shuttles was pretty shook. I told him to relax, wait it out. Logan's out of here in around a month.”

Harry drummed his fingers on his desk.

“Two times Logan's been wandering around in our area. Like the time he said he was back looking at the Wookiee drawing.”

“I remember. It was on the floor.”

“The second time he's sitting in my chair and says he's reading the murder book.”

We sat at our desk and looked at Logan's area, twenty feet distant. Like our arrangement, Logan and Shuttles had abutting desks in a tri-walled cubicle area.

“What's the saying about turnabout?” Harry asked. “It's fair play?”

Harry walked over to Logan's desk, sat. I followed, stood behind him, and kept an eye on the door. Logan was, strangely enough, a tidy kind of guy. Harry lifted a stack of papers, looked in files, checked in Logan's desk drawers. He lifted Logan's calendar, then his desk pad.

“Guess they didn't slide into the trash by mistake after all,” Harry said, pulling out the two crime scene photos missing from the Franklin book. Taken by the Forensics team, one photo was a wide shot of the Mazda and fifty or so feet surrounding it, rain-wet sidewalk, water running down the gutter. The other was basically the same, except the photographer had climbed the side of Arlin Dell's truck cab to get the wide downward angle: Mazda, background. A dozen feet ahead of the car I saw the yellow marker indicating where the knife had been found.

“Why in the hell would Logan want these?” Harry said. “They're location setters, not close enough to show anything important.”

He slipped the photos back under the pad and returned to his desk shaking his head.

“Souvenirs, maybe? The last scene he never worked? Shuttles is right, the son of a bitch is weirding out.”

Harry headed to the prosecutor's office, a final meeting before the trial on Monday. Harry would be on the stand a fair amount, grilled by a defense lawyer, and everyone wanted to get their act down. I was just happy the PO preferred Harry to me on such cases. But I had a tendency to ramble when questioned; Harry kept his answers brief, to the point, and had the presence of Thurgood Marshall in a room full of Munchkins.

I had an idea we hadn't yet considered: having sketch artist Terry Baney do a drawing of Crandell. We concluded he was running his operation from a rental house, somewhere with land around the dwelling, so he could remain anonymous and not make neighbors suspicious with what would probably be comings and goings at all hours. But he'd still have to be near Mobile.

We could put a sketch on the air, accompanied by a “wanted for information” type of line. I made a phone call, but forgot it was Saturday; Baney worked standard hours, wouldn't be in until Monday.

I scrawled my usual reminder—
Call Baney: drawing of Crandell
—set it front and center on my desk. I spun a few times in my chair.

I looked at my watch. Clair was stopping by tonight at seven, and we were finally going to have our talk. I wiped my palms dry on my jeans and went home to sweep the sand from my floor.

At six-fifty-nine, Clair Peltier's little red Beamer crunched across the sand and shells of my drive. For a moment I thought I'd forgotten to brush my teeth, recalled I'd brushed them twice this hour. I finger-combed hair from my eyes.

I heard Clair walk up my dozen wooden steps, pause on the stoop. When I opened the door, Clair's knock was still gathering in her hand. I bowed flamboyantly and gestured her inside. She took a tentative step, then crossed my threshold. Clair wore a simple lavender blouse, a slender silver necklace across her flawless skin. She had on shorts, white, mid-thigh. I'd rarely seen her when she wasn't wearing slacks, or dresses with mid-calf hemlines. I glanced down, smiled up.

“My gosh, Clair, you've got legs.”

“I, uh…thank you, Ryder.”

She passed by, studying my décor of shells and driftwood and pieces of art I'd scrimped to acquire, bright and whimsical pieces of folk art. I felt dizzy, like the air around her was suffused with a gentle intoxicant.

“Can I get a you a drink, Clair?”

“Wine available?”

“If you wish. Or I can mix up something with more…” I almost said
sexiness,
changed it to
sizzle
.

“Such as?”

“I worked as a bartender in college, at least when I felt like working. You ever had a Caribbean Lover?”

She touched a forefinger to her chin, batted her dark eyelashes, did Scarlett O'Hara.

“Mista Rydah, now that's puh-sonal.”

“Rum, pineapple juice, O.J., amaretto…Whoops, I don't have any amaretto. No Caribbean Lover. How about a zombie or a mai tai?”

She thought a moment, her lips pursed tight as a fresh rose. “I've tried them. Give me something I've never tasted before.”

I opened the cabinet, removed several little-used bottles and a cocktail shaker. I dug around in the fridge. Clair went back to gazing at my art while I measured and mixed. Two minutes later I handed her my concoction and poured one for myself.

“My take on Barbados Punch,” I said. “Triple sec, lime, pineapple, dark rum, and a pinch of cinnamon and clove.”

She took a sip, tasted her lips with her tongue, a flicker of pink. She winked her approval.

We walked to the deck doors, stepped outside. The water was aquamarine, turning deep blue a half mile out. Gulls screeched and tumbled in the air. A blue heron eyed us warily from a seagrass-covered dune in my front yard. The white Bertram I'd been seeing lately idled past, just outside the second bar. Clair walked to the railing and looked seaward. The breeze played in her hair.

“It's an incredible place, Ryder.”

“When my mother passed away she left me four hundred and eight thousand dollars. I had every intention of buying a twenty-thousand-dollar trailer out in the country, living off the interest of the remaining money.”

She turned. “I can see you doing that. I can't see you being happy for long. What changed your mind?”

I tumbled backward in time, to one of the most haunting moments of my life. For a moment I was frozen in the memory.

“It might sound strange, Clair.” I tried to put a laugh in my voice, but it came out raspy.

“Try me.”

I turned and pointed to the surf.

“One night I drove to Dauphin Island to go fishing. I was out there in the water, waves at my waist, a sky full of stars. The moon was full. It made a white line on the water that reached to the horizon. All of a sudden everything seemed to stop moving. I felt I could step onto the moonlight and walk to the horizon, gather the sky in my arms like silk. I could feel everything, Clair: sky, stars. Even the moonlight on my skin. It was the most peaceful moment I'd ever known, and I wanted to stay in that moment forever, never leave the water.”

I expected an amused smile. Clair's eyes balanced wonder with approval.

“One more thing, Clair,” I added. “When I headed back to my car, I passed this house, saw a
FOR SALE
sign. Guess what it cost?”

“Four hundred and eight thousand dollars, of course.”

“Do you think it was coincidence? Synchronicity? Fate?”

She moved beside me, her shoulder pressing my arm.

“You had a moment of light, Carson.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's beyond words: Moments that can't be described, only felt. We don't have the language or system of reference for any form of description. The world works in ways we find mysterious, forbidding. But only because we can't see beneath the surface. We sense shapes moving down there, feel ripples as they glide past. It's logical and orderly. But we can't explain why, or what powers it all, since…”

“It's outside our frame of reference,” I finished. For a moment we looked into each other's eyes. She swallowed and looked away and changed the subject.

“Have you told your ex-girlfriend to watch out for the Kincannons?”

“Not yet. I want to study them first. Closely.”

“Don't take long. They're like quicksand. She could get sucked into something she doesn't understand.”

“Ms. Danbury looks for things she doesn't understand and throws herself into them. It's what made her a good investigative reporter. If I'm going to tell her to stay away from her new boyfriend, I'm going to have to explain why.”

Clair spun the cocktail glass in her fingers for a few seconds, stared at the action, mulling over a thought.

“I always wondered why you never introduced Ms. Danbury to me.”

“I always meant to, Clair. I don't know why I didn't. I'm sorry.”

She studied the glass again. Set it on the railing. “It bothered me that you didn't introduce us. A lot, to tell the truth.”

“Why?”

Something shimmered in her eyes. The breeze slipped through her hair as she stared toward the horizon.

“It's ridiculous,” she said. “Nonsensical.”

“Tell me, Clair.”

She turned to me. I realized her eyes weren't blue. They were beyond anything that simple.

“I felt left out,” she said.

“Left out?”

“I said it was stupid. It's just that…we've been through some strange events together, Carson. Two years ago, when my life was falling apart, you were there. If we hadn't talked in my garden on that terrible day, I would never have faced my vanity and insecurities, the forces that had moved me for years. I might still be trapped in that life.”

“It had nothing to do with me, Clair. It was you that stood up to—”

She put her finger against my lips. “I could have retreated into the known and the safe. Instead, I jumped across the divide to a new world. I only jumped because you expected me to, Carson. I jumped because you believed I had the strength. I'm here now, safe on another shore, because of you. There was a reason you were in the garden that day.”

“There's a reason we both were.”

She started to respond, but I saw her mouth falter, not finding the language, the point of reference. Her lips were exotic petals drifting in water. My hands started to rise to her form.

And like Clair's lips, my arms faltered, drifted back to my sides. I turned my eyes from her face, mumbled, “Can I get you another drink?”

“No thank you,” she said, her eyes turning away. “I didn't realize I was so bushed by the week. I think I'd better go.”

“Of course,” I said. “We've both had some long days.”

“We can finish our talk later. Maybe get together for dinner next week. A nice seafood place.”

“That'd be good.”

I followed her inside. She picked up her purse, slung it over her shoulder, went to the door. I remained in the center of the room, hearing a roaring, like the waves had advanced fifty yards and were breaking against the pilings of my home.

Clair turned. Her eyes took a moment to rise to mine.

“Good-bye, Carson,” she said. “Take care.”

“Later,” I said.

 

The rains gathered in the west on Sunday, what one forecaster called “the last blast of spring,” set to roll through. I saw the system on the weather radar, lines of storm cells rolling in from south Texas and Mexico like ragged green ghosts. I lay in bed most of the day, half-heartedly poring over Rudolnick's pages. Harry called at six; he'd been doing the same.

“I finished my look-see on Rudolnick's case histories. No more pages tucked into magazines. Nothing more on the guy that scared him. Nothing on Harwood.”

“I got about a quarter of a box of Rudolnick's files left over here, Harry. You're free to read through them.”

Harry grunted.

“How about you finish them up and I'll drop by later to get 'em back into safekeeping. If I never read another psychiatric case history it'll be too soon.”

I glanced out the window: chop in the waves from the wind, but little more than scudding cumulus above. Larger pleasure boats were out; the big white Bertram was rolling slowly a quarter mile out. I wondered if it was a charter. Tourists loved dolphin cruises. My body felt the need for a tour across the water, but via kayak.

First though, there was my homework. I sighed, unboxed the last of Rudolnick's files, set them on my table. Pressed my palms against my temples and read.

 

Harry arrived close to eight, brushing mist from his hair. I'd finished my Rudolnick files and found nothing else exciting. I had just changed into swim trunks. The rough weather was predicted to last several days and I wanted to get a last run in before the storm arrived.

Harry looked at my swim gear.

“You just got in, I hope.”

“Heading out. I need it.”

“Carson…”

The local cutaway popped on the tube and I made a final check of the Doppler, studying the direction of the clouds on the time-lapse replay.

“I've got to get out there for a bit, Harry, clear my head.”

“Look at the damn clouds, Carson. They're a wall.”

I looked through the deck doors to the horizon. It looked like war being waged between earth and sky, vertical mountains of indigo smoke lit by jitters of internal lightning. I'd be cutting it close, but I needed the water and the exertion.

“They're moving almost parallel to the shore right now, Harry, trouble for Florida, not for me, at least not for another hour. I'll be back and on my second beer by then.”

Harry shook his head. He would have made a good Daniel Boone, a lousy Thor Heyerdahl.

“I'll have a scotch here, keep an eye out. When you get back I'll take the files to storage.”

“I'll be fine, bro,” I assured him. “Go home and play some tunes, blow out the jets.”

A murmur of thunder blew in with the wind. Harry grunted, picked up the files, and headed for the door.

I fought hard past the breakers, putting burn in my shoulders, a rasp in my breathing. Salt stung my eyes. Flying fish jumped my boat. A half mile out, I stopped paddling and stretched my back.

The breeze shifted direction, carrying the scent of rain and ozone, and I knew it was time for that beer. Twilight had almost deepened into night, and I spun to the pinpoint light of my deck. After a dozen strokes I became aware of a light at my back, behind it the burr of a wide-open motor.

I saw a bow bouncing. Bearing down on me.

I cut at a right angle, but the craft angled my way. I waved the paddle above my head like a pennant, idiotically yelling,
“Stop!”

I dove overboard and pulled hard toward bottom. The thud of the boat hitting my kayak reverberated through the water. The engine slowed as the craft spun in a tight circle. I surfaced, stroked to the side of a thirty-foot Bertram.

Light struck me, a circle of white. I looked into its brilliance and turned away. A rope ladder tumbled over the side. I pulled myself up the ladder, light blazing in my eyes, the boat rocking in the waves.

“Easy with that light,” I said, climbing into the craft. “It's blinding me.”

“I was afraid we were going to miss you,” said a voice from the helm.

“Miss finding me in the water?”

“Miss hitting you just right. I haven't driven a boat in a while.”

I froze and looked into the face of the man at the helm. A videotape honed into resolution: Crandell. He was grinning.

“Howdy, Carson,” said a voice beside me, strangely familiar. I turned.

Tyree Shuttles.

I spun to dive from the boat, but an arm encircled my neck and threw me to the deck. Something burned hot in my bicep and my mind turned to water and washed me down a hole in the deck.

Crandell's grin followed, like the Cheshire cat tumbling through the dark.