Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (5 page)

“Oh Lord,” Latisha said, laughing.

“I have a surprise for you, Hank.” I petted him, then rolled him over and applied
Land O’Lakes to his privates. As it turns out, fake butter is a total turnoff. It
worked fast. Hank lay on his back, exhausted. I peeled off the gloves, looked up at
Latisha.

“I will never look at you the same way,” she groaned.

“Yeah, well, we’re never going to speak of this. Ever. Not if you want to keep your
job.”

“My boss giving a poodle a hand job is not something I plan on bragging about. Just
sayin’.”

I took poor Hank for a walk down Peachtree Street while Latisha
watched TV and while White Trash watched Latisha watching TV. Hank appeared fully
recovered, though he was not as bouncy as usual. I decided not to discuss today’s
drama with Rauser. Some things just shouldn’t be shared with the person you love.

Forty minutes later we parked under one of the giant water oaks that overhung Beecher
Street. Huge roots that probably came to the surface during the first drought a couple
of years ago had pushed some of the sidewalk slabs up into peaks, cracked and strained
them.

Latisha ducked so I could pull the boom over from the backseat. The Neon isn’t exactly
roomy. “This is a microphone. It has video and a digital voice recorder,” I told her.
“That saucer on the end magnifies the sound so it can record and we can hear what’s
being said. There’s a place here to plug in our headphones.” I gave Latisha a pair
and slipped one on myself. They were small, the kind you see attached to iPods. “If
she comes out, point it at her and press this button.” I set the mike in Latisha’s
lap. It was about the size of a small megaphone.

She frowned. “Oh yeah, this will be inconspicuous.”

“Well, don’t hang out the door with it. Just prop it on the window. Gently. Try not
to drop it. It cost a bazillion dollars.”

“What if she doesn’t come out?”

“We wait,” I said, opening the file I’d brought with me. “There’s a lot of waiting
in this business. Staying awake is the trick.”

Latisha eyed me. “Did you wash your hands?”

“Yes. I was also wearing gloves.”

“You in your little crime-scene gloves.” Latisha giggled. “That was some funny shit
right there. CSI Atlanta. Boner Response Unit.”

“The BRU,” I said. We both laughed.

Latisha trained her sharp eyes on the frame house. I began flipping through photographs—shots
of a wooded area around a disposal site in central Georgia, thick in leaves and foliage;
shots from above the site at the top of the embankment where a killer had once stood;
shots of Melinda Cochran’s decomposing, debris-strewn body; photos taken as they’d
carefully uncovered her; more photos of Tracy Davidson’s skeletal remains positioned
just slightly below Melinda’s body. Melinda was on her right side, a position she
might have assumed for eternity but for the sensitive nose of a dog. A large hunk
of granite
had stopped her descent of the hill. I read a handwritten report the sheriff had filed
on the day of the discovery, brief, to the point—who, what, when, where. He noted
that they had found no impressions in leaves or dirt, and the scene photos reflected
that. If the killer was revisiting his disposal site to fulfill some psychological
requirements, he was very careful or he hadn’t done it recently enough to leave tracks.
Perhaps he wasn’t romantic about his work. Maybe he had returned only once to dispose
of the second body. I wondered what had triggered him and why he killed them when
he did. Because he was done, because they had fulfilled his needs? Or because they
were no longer able to? Had he simply grown bored, tired of them?

“Why do you like to look at all that stuff, Keye?” Latisha’s voice broke my concentration.
She was looking at the scene photos in my lap. Her headphones were hanging around
her neck. I removed mine.

“Because I’d want someone to do it for me,” I answered. She glanced again at the photos,
then turned back to the street.

A car pulled up in front of the house where Larry Quinn’s slip-and-fall woman lived.
A woman got out and walked around to the back door, gently lifted a baby out of a
car seat. “Showtime,” I told Latisha, then cringed as she awkwardly banged the mike
on the door before she got it propped up on the rolled-down car window. I showed her
again how to activate video and sound. We both put our headphones back on.

The front door opened and I saw the woman I recognized from the grocery store video.
She was in her late sixties, slightly overweight. She walked off the porch stiffly,
but with a smile. “Mama, you okay today?” asked the young woman holding the baby.
“I know that look.” They hugged. The baby reached out for the older woman.

“Grandma can’t hold you today, baby doll. I’ll have to love on you like this.” She
kissed his chubby face and neck until he giggled and waved his arms.

“You’re hurting,” the younger woman observed.

“I can’t seem to get comfortable, that’s all,” the older woman replied. “They say
it’s a compressed disc. It’s just going to take time.”

“We’re going to make sure those people make this right,” the daughter told her.

Latisha looked over at me. “This is depressing.”

“No shit.” I tossed my headphones onto the seat. “Let’s go. We’ll upload it to Larry
when we get back.”

“That’s it? What if she didn’t get like that in the grocery store fall? What if she
faked the whole thing ’cause she was already injured?”

“Larry Quinn wanted to know if she was hurt. She’s hurt. Send him an invoice and let
him decide what to do with her.”

“Well, I don’t trust it,” Latisha grumbled. “That fall looked fake to me. I coulda
faked a fall better than that.”

“Yeah. I know.” I took the microphone out of her hand and put it in the backseat.
“I don’t trust it either. But that’s not our problem. Not today anyway. Today we take
her at face value because that’s what our client cares about.”

“That sucks,” Latisha said.

“Tell me about it.”

4

I picked up a couple of dozen Krispy Kremes on the way to a meeting. It was my week.
Lot of coffee and doughnuts go down at these things. I knew from experience not to
show up without the sugar when it’s my week.

I pulled up to a squat redbrick building about the size of my living room surrounded
by the hulking silver towers from the Georgia Power station. A cloud of cigarette
smoke burned my sinuses as I waded past a group of four hot-boxing cigarettes around
the front door. Facing an hour without nicotine had put them in a spin. I don’t judge.
We all have our crutches. I was holding mine, warm and sugar-glazed in a green-and-white
box of pure happiness. I’ve been sober a little over four years and back in the program
for only about six weeks. It’s a pain in the ass—AA. Seriously. Carving out the time,
whining about the tricks my obsessive addict’s brain plays on me, slashing a vein
for an audience. Not crazy about any of it. Way out of my comfort zone. Fortunately,
the program works without love. It only requires my commitment. And to be honest,
there’s something about the people, all of them so different, from every imaginable
background, probably feeling as awkward and exposed and as vulnerable as I do standing
up in front of a group of strangers and bleeding out weakness, guilt, shame, and secrets.
Okay, so if the bloodletting
goes on for too long, I tune out. Zero tolerance for complainers and me, me, me people.
But when someone steps up there after their lives have been totally derailed by addiction
and they’re not hanging on by the fingernails, they’re not complaining, they are kicking
it in the ass, now that’s something to be present for. And if I’m lucky, I can duck
out before the praying and hand-holding start.

I didn’t speak at the meeting. A white chip was handed out to a newbie and I sat in
a folding gray metal chair and sipped coffee from a small Styrofoam cup and listened
to his story. Our stories all have a common thread. They all end with our addiction
taking a claw hammer to our lives. This is part of what these meetings do for me.
They remind me. And next time I want a drink, I’ll remember that man standing up there
tonight, thirty years old and utterly terrified he’s not strong enough to do what
he knows he must do—stop or die.

I found Rauser at home with a Braves game on television, a baseball cap on backward,
Hank lying next to him and White Trash in his lap. He was sipping bourbon on the rocks.
“You hungry?” he asked. His eyes hadn’t left the television. “I ordered Indian.”

“Starved,” I said, and filled a glass with crushed ice and Diet Pepsi. I know, I know.
It’s frowned on here. It’s a
Coca-Cola
town. Atlanta will forgive you for a lot of things, but being disloyal to the brand
is just over the line. I have to sneak out to the grocery store in the dark of night
with a fake mustache and glasses to buy what is generally referred to in Atlanta as
swill.

We propped up on the floor once the food arrived with our backs against the couch
and our plates in our laps. We seldom had time to do this without someone’s phone
going off. Our schedules are like that. Inertia or frenzy. There is rarely middle
ground. Tonight was blissfully quiet as we pulled off pieces of naan and raked it
through spicy eggplant and lentils and mint chutney. Rauser kissed me and the bourbon
was warm on his lips. I wanted a drink every time I smelled it. But I would have never
admitted this to him.

After dinner, I found the reports from Sheriff Meltzer I hadn’t had time to absorb
in the car with Latisha. Rauser was glued to the television. I wouldn’t have known
he even noticed I’d moved to the couch behind him except that he leaned his head back
against me. This is
just one of the things I love about the man. He’s not the least bit threatened when
my attentions are diverted.

I began reading the reports from the crime lab on the case of two dead girls discovered
at the bottom of an embankment in Hitchiti County. Both victims had bone injuries.
A forensic anthropologist had determined that the significant bone injuries occurred
in life, not after death. But when the injuries had occurred in their young lives
was unknown. Tracy had chips and fractures in her wrists, ankles, and feet. Her arm
had been broken. Melinda had sustained similar injuries to her ankles, plus several
other fractures. Melinda’s body hadn’t been in that hole long enough to disguise superficial
curiosity marks on her arms and face—the point of a knife. Not deep. The killer was
experimenting, still inventing himself. I began making notes of things I’d need from
the sheriff. Interviews with the parents were at the top of my list. They would know
if and when their children had been injured. I’d need medical records, which would
confirm the parents’ statements. I wanted to know if domestic abuse reports had ever
been filed on their residences. The sheriff had excluded the families as suspects.
I wanted to know why. I had some ideas about the breaks and fractures, their severity
or lack thereof, and the location of the injuries. I’d seen similar injuries to ankles
and wrists in victims who had been restrained, beaten, handled, victims who had fought
and struggled with their restraints. But I needed to know more about these girls’
physical conditions at the time they were abducted in order to develop a clearer understanding
of their environment while they were prisoners and of the person who abducted and
murdered them.

I went over the photos from the disposal site again—Tracy’s bony remains peeking though
leaves, Melinda’s nude corpse draped around the rock that had kept her from hitting
bottom. The blouse the fisherman and his son pulled off the bank had been the only
article of clothing found. Trace evidence, hair and fiber, can cling to clothing even
after long-term exposure to the elements. And so can DNA, as evidenced by the skin
cells still in the collar of the blouse. Semen had been found in the underpants of
victims after months of exposure,
and it had been used to convict offenders. Did our killer know this? Was he educated
in evidence collection? I thought about where those girls had been held. Was it damp
and dark? Or were they positioned so they could see the free world passing by? Wherever
they were, their terror must be painted on those walls.

Rauser was standing over me when I opened my eyes. I’d fallen asleep in the second
hour of reading and rereading. “Braves won,” he said. “It’s after midnight.” He’d
taken the reports I had in my lap and stacked them neatly on the table. He smiled,
held up the new smartphone I’d given him for his birthday, and snapped a picture.

“I’m going to take that phone away from you.”

He held out both his hands for me, pulled me to my feet. “Get your shoes on.”

We walked under the Midtown streetlights, holding hands, talking about our day—his
cases at APD Homicide and the reports I’d received from a small-town sheriff—with
Hank straining against his leash, sniffing at everything, seemingly unaffected by
his Viagra incident. We didn’t talk about the silverware drawer or Rauser’s anger
this morning. We walked home and Rauser closed the bedroom door as I undressed. His
arms came around me. He kissed my bare shoulders. I felt his breath in my ear, his
hands brushing my nipples, running down my body, between my legs. He knelt and pulled
me hard against him—my hands in his thick hair, his mouth hot and wet. When he stretched
out and I slipped easily down on him, felt his hands holding on to my hips, saw the
muscles flex in his shoulders and arms, we kissed and rocked and I rode him until
I felt him pulsing inside me. And then we slept that heavenly, dreamy, connected,
after-sex sleep that’s so good once you’ve learned each other’s bodies. Our movements,
even in sleep, were perfectly synced now.