Authors: J.D. Rhoades
“Either of them ever say anything about where the boyfriend lived? What he did?”
“Naw. He kept tellin’ people he was an actor. Said he knew a lot of people at the movie studio. Talked a lot about movies he’d been in, but they was all older stuff. He never seemed to be workin’ these days.” She leaned forward and her voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “Dealin’ drugs, is what I think.”
Keller thought for a moment. He knew a couple of people working at the Screen Gems lot outside of town. Maybe they had a listing of people who had worked there. It would be a long list; the studio was the biggest production facility on the East Coast. This was assuming the boyfriend wasn’t just a poser. Still, the boyfriend was all the lead he had right now. “This guy named Roy by any chance?”
“Yeah,” Alicia said. “Roy Randle. Sounded fake to me.”
“Probably,” Keller said. “But I’ll check it out. Thanks.” He slid out of the booth and stood up.
The flirtatious grin was back. “So when you gonna show me them handcuffs?” She darted a glance at the kitchen, where Bart was haranguing the other waitress about something. She lowered her voice. “I get off in an hour.”
“Sorry,” Keller said. “My workday’s just starting.”
“Well,” she said, disappointment obvious in her face, “I work every weekday ‘til three. Stop by, when you have some time.”
“I could be an axe murderer for all you know,” Keller said.
She smiled at him. “You don’t look crazy,” she said.
Shows how much you know, Keller thought. He left a twenty on the table for the coffee and the information and walked out.
Out in the car, he flipped open the file and looked again at the picture of Laurel Marks. He was beginning to get a sense of her, beginning to fill in the spaces behind what he could see in the photo. Now he felt the anger in the set of the jaw, the fury behind the eyes. He looked back at the restaurant. Alicia was looking out the window at him. When she saw him look up, she waved, then went back to work.
Keller shook his head. Not so long ago, he would have played the game, done the dance of invitation and withdrawal, until the final act, bodies locked together in a momentary coupling in a rumpled bed somewhere. And after that…nothing. For the long dead years since the desert, nothing had meant anything to him.
Now, everything had changed. Keller slid the cell phone into the slot of his hands-free system and hit a number on the speed dialer. There was the soft chirring of the ringer on the other end, then a gravelly male voice answered. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Jones,” Keller said. “It’s Jack Keller.”
“Keller,” Marie’s father growled, “how many times have I gotta tell you to call me Frank?”
“Sorry, Frank,” Keller said. “Marie’s working, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he said, “You wanna leave a message?” A loud metallic banging rose in the background, filling the car. “BEN!” Frank Jones shouted. “Cut it OUT! I’m on the PHONE!” The banging stopped.
“Sounds like you’re pretty busy,” Keller said. “Thirty years I was a cop,” Frank said. “I handled drunks, dopeheads, thieves, about a thousand varieties of asshole…and the person that’s made me craziest is a freakin’ five-year-old.”
“You can’t shoot him,” Keller said. “That’s what’s making you nuts.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “That’s gotta be it. Anyway…”
“Just tell her I called. About this weekend.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “You comin’ up?”
“I don’t know yet,” Keller said.
Frank’s voice turned cooler. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever.”
Keller was about to say something, but the banging started up again. “BEN!” Frank hollered before coming back on the line. “Gotta go,” he said in a harried voice.
“Thanks, Frank,” Keller said, but the line was dead.
Shelby was standing over a plump woman in a shapeless flowered dress, on her knees in the parking lot. She had her hands over her face. As Shelby tried to put his hand on her shoulder, she dropped her hands, threw back her head, and screamed again. It was a wordless soul-tearing howl of anguish and despair and it made the hair on the back of Marie’s neck go up. Shelby yanked his hand back as if the woman had burned him.
Marie holstered the gun and walked over. The woman’s screams had subsided to great convulsive sobs and she had covered her face with her hands again. Marie looked at Shelby.
“Station owner’s wife,” he said.
“Jesus Christ,” Marie said. “She scared the shit out of me.”
A strange pained look flickered across Shelby’s face for a moment, then was gone. Marie hesitated for a moment, puzzled by the sudden tension between them. She broke it by asking, “The lady make an ID yet?” He gestured at her. “Looks like she’s doin’ one right now, doncha think?”
She grimaced. “Yeah, but we’ve got to…ah, shit.” Marie knelt beside the woman and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Ma’am?” she said softly. “Ma’am, please, I need to ask you something.”
The woman suddenly turned to Marie and grabbed her shoulders like a drowning person blindly pulling her rescuer under with her. Her pale face was wet with tears and her eyes red and swollen.
“My boy,” she croaked. “Oh, God, oh, Jesus, did they kill my boy, too?” Her eyes unfocused and another wail seemed to be building deep inside her. Marie grabbed the woman’s shoulders in her own grip. A passerby might have thought they were wrestling. Marie shook the woman slightly. “Ma’am!” she barked. The woman came back briefly. “What boy, ma’am? Was your son here?”
The woman nodded vigorously. “How old, ma’am?”
Marie persisted. “How old is your son?”
“Suhh…suh…sixteen,” the woman blubbered. Her eyes went away again. She buried her face back in her hands and began sobbing.
Marie got up and looked at Shelby. “I haven’t found another body,” she said. “But there’s some drops of blood in the restroom. And some paper towels in the trash with blood on them. Like someone was trying to clean up.”
Shelby gestured toward where the body lay. “No one tried to clean up in there. So maybe the victim got a few licks in on the guy that kilt him.”
“Or,” Marie said, “maybe the kid’s…” She looked at the woman on the ground. “I’ll look around.” Shelby nodded. He bent down to the woman on the ground and began trying to raise her to her feet.
Marie checked the back of the station. There was a narrow passageway between the back of the building and a tangle of kudzu vines that had overtaken and strangled a thicket of pine trees behind the station. The narrow path was littered with twelve-ounce plastic soda bottles and discarded food wrappers. Marie slowly made her way down the narrow passage. It was barely wide enough for her to get through. There was no sign of anything or anyone having gone into the woods. She came around the other side of the station where a Dumpster sat, its green paint flaked off to expose the metal beneath, showing cancerous patches of rust. She took a deep breath and held it before looking in. Nothing. She walked back around to the front. Shelby had gotten the woman into the backseat of his car and was crouched down on the pavement next to the car door, nodding at something she was saying. Marie walked into the repair bay.
The lights were off and there were no cars in the bay for repairs. There was a door at the far end on which the word PARTS had been written with a marker on the bare wood. She opened the door and looked inside. She saw handmade wooden shelves filled with haphazardly stacked boxes of hoses, gaskets, fuses, and the like, but no body.
She was closing the door when she noticed the safe. It was tucked away in a comer of the tiny storeroom. The door stood wide open. Marie walked over, crouched down, and looked inside. Empty. She bit her lip and thought for a moment. Then she got up and walked back toward the front of the station. As she passed by the workbench, a flash of pink caught her eye. It was a magazine. She picked it up and grimaced. A girl who looked barely out of high school was on the cover. She was
naked. Marie’s lip curled in disgust. She moved as if to toss the magazine back onto the workbench. Then she saw the streak of blood on the cover. She put the magazine gently back down, as close to its original place as she could remember before walking back out into the sunlight. Shelby was coming her way. They met in the middle of the lot.
“Nothing?” Shelby said. Marie shook her head.
“So the boy was took,” Shelby said. The kidnapper beat him up, tried to get him cleaned up, and took him.”
Marie kept her voice low. “Maybe, but there’s a safe in the storeroom. It’s open and looks like it’s been cleaned out.”
“Kidnapping and robbery then.”
“There’s more,” Marie said. “There’s a pomo magazine on the workbench. There’s blood on it, too.” Shelby looked startled for a moment, then looked away. My God, Marie thought, he’s blushing. After a moment, he looked back. “So the killer walked in on the victim readin’ a dirty magazine and they din’t like it.”
“Or the kid was reading the magazine,” Marie said. “And that’s why he didn’t notice the killer coming in. Or killers. We can’t rule out more than one.”
Shelby shook his head. “We need to call the SBI. Get a crime scene team in here. Meantime, we may have us a child kidnapped.”
“Shelby, you need to consider something,” Marie said. “Maybe the kid did it.”
Shelby looked pained. “Look,” Marie said. “I know it may be tough to think about, a child killing a parent…”
“Stepparent,” Shelby said. “The mother said the victim weren’t the natural father.” He grimaced. “But yeah, I already thought of that. Don’t like to think that way, but it’s surely possible.” He looked at Marie. “But if that boy is kidnapped and we don’t treat it that way…”
“Yeah,” Marie said. “You’re right. We’ll get crucified.” The uncomfortable look crossed Shelby’s face again. What is eating this guy? Marie wondered. “So,” she said after a moment. “You want to do an Amber Alert?”
Shelby pondered this for a moment. Amber Alert would put a statewide media notification, like that for a tornado or other natural disaster, onto hundreds of
participating TV and radio stations. For a child under thirteen, when there was a possibility of stranger abduction or imminent harm, Amber Alert was automatic. For disappearances of children older than that, potential abductions were considered on a case-by-case basis. “No,” Shelby said, “not yet. We’ll keep lookin’ at ever’thing.” He looked at Marie, up and down. “Jones,” he said.
Marie shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. “Yes, sir…I mean, yeah?”
“My reg’lar partner’s out. He just had surgery. Prostate cancer.”
Marie was startled by the sudden change in subject. “Sorry to hear it.”
“He’ll be awright,” Shelby said. “They got it early. But he’ll be laid up for a while an’ I’m a little shorthanded right now. Y’want to work this one with me?”
Would I? Marie thought. Work a murder, possible kidnapping? She had been waiting to sit for the sergeant’s exam before the death of her partner had derailed her career, and suddenly a whole new path had opened up for her. Her heart leaped for a moment. Then it came back to earth as she looked at the mother weeping in the back of Shelby’s car. She felt a momentary flash of shame.
“Yeah,” she told Shelby. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
He nodded. “I’ll talk to the major and set it up.”
Marie grimaced. “He’s not going to be happy with that. He’s a real bear about overtime.”
Shelby gave her that snaggletoothed grin again. “He’ll get over it. He owes me.”
“Okay,” she said. She took a business card out of her pocket and scribbled a number on it. “Here’s my cell number,” she said.
“Good,” he said. His face turned serious. “But Jones, I want to ask you something.”
“Okay,” Marie said, her eyes wary. Now the catch, she thought.
“Could you not take the Lord’s name in vain in front of me?” Shelby asked.
Marie was struck dumb for a moment. Shelby went on resolutely.
“I know you get used to rough language in law enforcement,” he said. “Before I got saved, I was guilty of it myself. But I’d really appreciate it.”
Marie finally found her voice. “Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I didn’t know—”
Shelby waved it off. “I know. I don’t blame you for it, it’d just make it easier for us to work together, y’understand.”
“Sure,” Marie said. “No problem. I mean, I’ll try … ”
He nodded, looking satisfied. “That’s all any of us can do, Marie,” he said. His face lit up with a sudden idea. “Hey,” he said. “Whyn’t you come over for dinner tomorrow night? Barbara can make up some of her fried chicken. There’s plenty.”
“Ahh … I was going to see my, ah, boyfriend tomorrow night.” Boyfriend. The word still felt strange to Marie.
“Heck, bring him, too,” Shelby said. “Barbara always makes enough to feed a platoon.”
She smiled. “He’s in Wilmington,” she said, “but maybe I could persuade him to come up.” “Six-thirty, then,” he said. “And come hungry.”
They loaded the weapons in the back of the cargo van. Laurel and Roy climbed in the front. Stan climbed into the cargo compartment through the sliding side doors. He noticed a pair of sleeping bags and a cooler shoved up against the back. He crawled over and propped his back against them. It was hard to see from there, and he couldn’t hear what Roy and Laurel were saying. He was left curled up in the back with his thoughts.