Authors: Carsten Stroud
Nick studied his face.
“That’s what I think too.”
Both men worked that through in silence, and then Nick said something that surprised Lemon.
“So where does this take us?”
“
Us
?”
Nick looked over at Tig, and then back at Lemon.
“There’s no getting around this one. You’re as wrapped up in this thing as anyone is. You knew the Teagues, you knew that Sylvia was worried about Rainey a long while back. You’re the one who saw Merle Zane walking around Lady Grace twenty hours after he died. None of these people here—Tig, Boonie, the rest of the cops—none of them know deep in their guts that what’s going on in this town is real.”
“Boonie said he believed us about the mirror. He’s the one who asked you to look at Merle Zane’s body and try to explain it.”
“When Boonie has time to think about it, he’ll decide that I’m a Section Eight Discharge suffering from post-traumatic stress and you’re this crazy Indian mystic and Merle Zane needs to go in the ground and have a big rock put on the grave to keep him there. What else can he do? No. There’s nobody else but us. Whether you like it or not, you’re stuck in this thing.”
Lemon looked away, indecision in his expression. Nick picked up on it, figured he knew why.
“What the hell happened with the Corps anyway? I’ve never asked you that.”
“I met three MPs who didn’t like me.”
“You or your skin?”
“Started with my skin. I made it about me. They got put in the hospital and I got put in the brig.”
“Good for you.”
He paused, thought it over.
“Wanna know why I’m not still in Special Ops?”
“I know you miss it like crazy. I know you tried to get back in.”
“They turned me down. Why? I killed three disabled girls in a place called the Wadi Doan. Shot them down in an alley.”
Lemon shook his head.
“That’s not the whole story.”
“Never is. I need your help in this. It’s all connected somehow. These freaking bone baskets. What happened to Rainey last night. The way he’s changing. There’s a way it all fits together. I need you to help me figure out how.”
“You should have had Beau Norlett. He’s a good cop. You could ask him for anything.”
“Yeah. He is and I could. But I don’t have him. Even if everything goes right, he’s looking at a lot more surgery and six months of rehab.”
“What about Reed? He’s a cop. And he’s family.”
Nick waved that off.
“Reed’s too fucking
sane
for this. I need somebody totally whacked, somebody who can see dead men walking. I need a crazy Indian mystic and you’re the only one I’ve got. Besides, Reed’s on his way to Sallytown. He left this morning.”
“What’s he going to do in Sallytown?”
“You know damn well. You and Kate have already talked about it. His bogus birth certificate.”
“He’s going to try to find out who Rainey is?”
“Yes. So that leaves you and me.”
“And Kate and Beth.”
“Yes. But we’re going to have to keep them out of the line of fire. We’re going to have to keep a lot of this from Kate.”
“She won’t like that.”
“I know. But we’re going to try anyway.”
Tig was headed back, looking grim, trailed by the two morgue guys.
Lemon had one last thing.
“Back at the Bar Belle, when we were trying to explain all this to Boonie, at the end, when he said he believed us but he had no idea what the hell to do about it, do you remember what you said?”
“Yeah. I said FIDO. Fuck It Drive On.”
“And you told Boonie to put Merle Zane in the ground and walk away.”
“I remember.”
“So what’s changed?”
Nick gave it a moment.
“What’s changed is this stuff isn’t going away. It’s coming closer and closer to me and my family. It’s not just a bunch of people I don’t know. It’s already been in my house, and now, with Rainey, and maybe even with Axel, I think it’s back again. So I can’t just say FIDO. I have to try to do something about it.”
“Nick … what we’re talking about … what’s wrong with Rainey and Axel … these bone baskets … with Niceville, there may be no
solution
to
any
of it. It might be something we just … can’t handle. At all. Any of us. You have Kate. You have Beth and Axel and Hannah to think about too. You have a good life here. What we’re talking about … maybe it’s not something you can
solve
, like a murder or a bank robbery. I don’t believe it is. I think it’s something from …”
“From
outside
?”
Lemon smiled.
“Yes. I said that. In Lacy Steinert’s office at the Probe. Just before Rainey woke up.”
“Well, I think the
outside
is already in.”
Nick dropped Lemon off at his apartment in Tin Town, drove a block up, and took out his cell phone.
“Nick?”
“Kate. Where are you?”
“I’m at Lady Grace. But I’ve got a hearing—”
“How’s Rainey?”
“They gave him an EKG. No sign of anything. They’re releasing him right now. Shock, is what they’re saying. And stress. I’m taking him home and putting him to bed. Beth and Eufaula will take care of him. I can’t miss this hearing. How did it go at Patton’s Hard?”
“Alice was there, honey.”
He heard Kate’s breathing stop, and then start again. “Was it … bad?”
Nick told her almost the whole story, editing out the grisly details, but including what Tig had said, about talking to Rainey and Axel, about getting them legal representation. Kate heard him out and was silent for a time after he stopped.
“Tig doesn’t really think that Rainey and Axel pushed Alice Bayer into the river and then shoved her car in on top of her, does he? I mean, he can’t think that. They’re just little kids.”
“I don’t know what Tig is thinking. I don’t think he does either. But
Rainey and Axel left stuff of theirs at the scene, and Alice Bayer was the attendance secretary at Regiopolis. And she was known to go looking for truants. So Tig has to look at that. That means Rainey and Axel will need legal representation.”
“I think I can represent Rainey. Maybe both, if Beth will agree. I’ll talk to Judge Monroe. And to Beth. But I think it would be okay.”
“Kate, you know how this looks.”
“Yes. I do.”
“I’ve done a couple of things—”
“I know. Reed called me. He says he’s on the way to Sallytown. I’m okay with that. Maybe he can come up with better details than I could. It has to be done. Especially now.”
“This thing looks … it’s going to be rough on everyone. I was thinking, about Rainey, this seizure thing, on top of the wall. And everything that went on over the last year and a half. Have you thought about getting him in for tests? I mean, more than just an EKG. We talked about this last night.”
“I’ve got a call in to Dr. Lakshmi. She was the chief neurologist on Rainey’s case. I haven’t heard back yet.”
“I think it would be a good idea to call her back right now, Kate. Get something started. Get Rainey in as soon as you can. Let him get some rest, and, if you can, get him in to see Dr. Lakshmi right now. And don’t let him out of your sight until you get him in there. He needs to be under medical care by this afternoon. At the latest. Do you understand what I’m saying? Tig’s not going to move all that fast, but he will move.”
Kate didn’t need any of that explained to her, and saying it out loud would have come close to being a breach of ethics for both of them.
What neither of them was saying was that if Rainey or Axel had been in any way responsible for what had happened to Alice Bayer—and both of them were very afraid that might be true—then the only possible explanation—and the only viable defense—would be a neurological finding that would diminish—or erase—Rainey’s culpability.
And Axel’s defense—if he needed one at all—was that he was just a kid and had no way of forming any kind of culpable intent that the law would consider. It was highly unlikely that Axel would even be considered for charges.
On a fundamental level, Kate understood the conflict going on in Nick’s heart. She knew him well enough to know that he hadn’t told her a tenth of what he had seen at Patton’s Hard, and she knew that as a cop
he had a reflexive contempt for concepts such as
diminished capacity
and
fugue states
and
mens rea
and all the rest of the lexicon of exculpatory medicolegal jargon.
But she also knew that sometimes those arguments were true, and fair.
There wasn’t much else to say, except one thing.
“Nick, I know how you feel about all of this.”
“It won’t be my case, Kate. After he has time to think it over, Tig will have to put somebody else on it. I’ll try to see it’s somebody smart. Maybe Stephanie Zeller. She’s a single mom, got two kids. Maybe it’ll give her a little empathy.”
“I know, honey. But I also know how you feel, and I think what you’re doing for the boys is wonderful. I admire you for it. I love you for it.”
“Kate, thank you … but I have to be straight. I may be doing it for Axel and Beth and Hannah. But I’m not doing it for Rainey. I have a lot of doubts about that kid. Something’s not right there. I’m doing this for you and Beth and the family.”
“Nick, Rainey’s family too.”
Nick was quiet.
She left it there.
“Bye, babe,” she said, and clicked off.
The taking of Lyle Preston Crowder came as a huge surprise to Lyle Preston Crowder. At around two on the Friday, the last day of a six-day week, he unhooked a flatbed loaded with Sheetrock at the dock of a Home Depot ten blocks away from the Galleria Mall in northwestern Niceville.
The drop took about a half hour since the flatbed was ancient and the jacks were rusted and cranking the damn thing off the hook on his Kenworth was a real bitch.
But he got it done and pulled his rig away from the lot, thinking about
getting to the nearest 7-Eleven to pick up a twelve-pack of Dos Equis beer, a DVD of Tres Equis porno, and a humongous pepperoni pizza, and going back to his semi-regular room at the Motel 6 on North Gwinnett for a rest, which, after six days on the road, he felt he had well and truly earned.
He was giving his employers an honest day’s work every time he logged on because he was glad to still have a job after that “accident” he’d been involved in last spring.
It was the only truly rotten stunt he’d ever pulled in his life—things had gone horribly wrong—people had died—and he had spent the next few weeks sick with fear of every phone ring and every knock on the door.
But the time had passed and no one had come to arrest him and even the guilt was fading. He had his life back, praise the Lord, along with a cool ten thousand dollars, and he’d never risk it again. This was a kind of internal prayer that he recited to himself every day at quitting time, and he was saying it again as he pulled the Kenworth into the lot at the Motel 6 and climbed down from the cab with his beer and his pizza and his porn, a pale-skinned kid with a compact build and a threadbare goatee, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a faded
MARGARITAVILLE
logo on it.
He was twenty-seven, separated from his high school sweetheart, a recovering cocaine addict, hence the separation, an avid supporter of the Green Bay Packers, and not really a bad guy, in spite of what he had done last spring, but payback seems to be woven into the warp and woof of the universe. His was waiting patiently for him inside room 229 of the Motel 6 on North Gwinnett.
He had chosen the room—a monthly rental—because it had a view of the courtyard pool and of the parking lot out back, so he could watch over his truck and admire the girls getting tanned around the poolside.
He juggled the sack and keyed his lock open and stepped into the dimly lit room, immediately aware of the smell of cigarette smoke.
A man was sitting in the battered vinyl recliner in the middle of the room, facing the door, and he was holding a large gray steel pistol.
The pistol, fitted with a long steel tube that registered with Lyle as a silencer, was being held in a steady hand and at the other end of the arm attached to that hand was a cold face staring back at him. The man was in a nice-looking gray suit and a white shirt and a black tie. It struck Lyle that maybe he was a cop, although he looked more like a funeral director.
“Who the fuck are you and what’s your fucking problem?”
“I have no problem, Mr. Crowder,” said the man, in a cool, soft voice with an accent but nothing Lyle could name. “Please come in, put your groceries down, and sit over there by the desk.”
Lyle looked at the gun. He wasn’t afraid yet. Young people in America have witnessed this sort of confrontation many times, although only on television or in the movies, but nothing ever happened to the hero, and all young people are heroes in their own movies.
So Lyle got lippy.
“If you’re a cop, show me your tin. Otherwise, how about you just fuck off, old man—”
The old man did not show tin. Nor did he fuck off. The old man shot Lyle in the meaty part of his left thigh.
The muffled crack of the shot bounced around the room but hardly registered in the outer world, where the chuffing whisper of the round being fired got lost in the general roar and bustle of the traffic out on North Gwinnett, in the howl of a plane taking off from Mauldar Field, which was close, and in the bass-heavy music coming from a group of teenagers, boys and girls, hanging around down by the courtyard pool.
Pretty much the same thing happened to Lyle’s scream, which at any rate only lasted until he hit the carpet, at which point Mr. Endicott was kneeling down beside him and sticking a needle into the side of his neck, and after that the thinking and feeling and screaming part of Lyle Preston Crowder left the building.
Nor did the sound of the shot reach Edgar Luckinbaugh where he was sitting in Aunt Vi’s moth-eaten Windstar across the street in the parking lot of a Wendy’s restaurant. He had watched an hour ago as Mr. Endicott had parked his Cadillac in the Wendy’s lot and extracted a small leather case from the truck, locked the car with the remote, and walked across North Gwinnett to the Motel 6, where he climbed a set of outside stairs to the second-floor walkway and made his way to room 229, where he used—or showed every sign of using—a key to let himself in.