The Immortals (20 page)

“If we can tie him to Barent we'll be set. Any correspondence between the two?”

“Not that we've found yet. We dumped his texts and are going through them, but that's going to take a while.”

“Anything off the personal security video cameras at any of the houses?”

“The only one that had a camera was the Norwoods', but it was turned off. The rest were pointed away from the scenes, so nothing of use.”

“Well, if little Miss Ember was sneaking out at night to
see her boyfriend, Thorn, she may have jury-rigged the camera to cover her tracks.”

“We'll have to ask the Norwoods to get the whole story. The security firm said the camera was turned off sometime during the first week of September because Mrs. Norwood felt it too intrusive.”

“Too intrusive? I will never understand why people spend oodles of money on these elaborate alarm systems then don't use them correctly.”

“Maybe Mrs. Norwood was aware of her daughter's proclivity for running around after hours and approved,” McKenzie said.

“Do any parents approve of their child seeking nocturnal activities?” Marcus asked.

Taylor glanced at him in the rearview. “You'd be surprised. I've seen parents do crazy things. If the Edvins were feeling so terrorized by their son, what's to say the Norwoods weren't feeling that from their daughter? Maybe it was self-preservation.”

“Do you think she could kill her own brother?”

“I don't know, Marcus. I just don't know.”

McKenzie pointed to an ornate mailbox. “Hey, this is it.”

Taylor braked, hard, skidding a little bit on the rough asphalt. There was a gated entrance, harled stone stacked six feet high on either side of a dirt driveway. The black wrought-iron gate was conveniently open.

Taylor backed up a bit, then drove through, dust swirling around the Lumina in choking waves.

The drive was about a mile long, with a hedge running along each side that blocked the view of the land.

“He's got a decent bit of property out here,” she said, gritting her teeth as she hit a dip in the road unexpectedly, jarring all of them. “Sorry.”

The road curved then, and opened into a beautiful cobblestone parking area. The house beyond sprawled the length of the circular turnaround, a three-storied Gothic Victorian, columned, gray with white trim, complete with
a turret. It was a lovely house, double balconies, in good shape, no peeling paint, no cobwebs. If it were run-down, then she could get the sense that the king of the vampires lived there. As it was, it was downright cheery. She snorted to herself at the thought, threw the car into Park and climbed out.

Simari pulled in behind, left Max in the car and joined them.

Marcus stared in admiration at the surroundings. “Used to be a farm, I'd bet. See how the land rolls away? It would make a good vineyard.”

“Lots of good farmland up here. Cotton and corn. Some tobacco, too.”

They jumped at the voice, turned to see a small man in coveralls advancing on them, brandishing a rake.

“You're trespassing on private property. Can I help you folks?”

Taylor took a step back, tapped her badge on her belt. “Yes, sir. My name is Lieutenant Jackson, Metro Homicide. Detective Wade, Detective McKenzie and Officer Simari. We have a warrant to search the premises.”

Max began barking in the backseat, Taylor shot Simari a glance.
No sense getting this guy riled up. Go calm the dog.
Simari turned and went to her patrol car. Max's throaty growls lessened.

The man used the rake like a cane, leaned on it and scratched his freckled, balding head. He had tufts of white hair pouring out of his ears—it made him look like a party favor.

“Now, what in the world? A warrant? For what? Why do you need to search my home?”

“Your home? We were under the impression that it belonged to a Keith Barent Johnson.”

“Ha!” The little old man laughed. “That's me, and this here's my house. But I've done nothing wrong.”

“Sir, we have a man in custody who says his name is
Keith Barent Johnson, and lists this address as his residence.”

The man shifted the rake to his other side. Taylor could see him thinking. He finally sighed deeply, mopped his forehead with a red bandanna and waved them to the porch.

“You're probably talking about my son, Barry. Come on in the house, I need some coffee. We can talk.”

 

Mr. Johnson poured the coffee, so thick it practically slid into the cups.

“Barry's a good boy, you mind. Just a wee bit messed up in the head. He was a soldier, don'tcha know. A damn good one, from what I hear.”

“What branch of service was he in?” Taylor asked. She pretended to sip from her cup—coffee wasn't her favorite thing in the world.

“Marines. First Gulf War. He's a chemical engineer by training, but he ended up in the infantry. Boy can handle a weapon—I taught him young, they buffed him up. Parris Island, then SOI at Camp Geiger.”

“SOI?” Taylor asked.

“School of Infantry. He came home in one piece, but the mind wasn't all there, if you know what I mean. Gulf War syndrome, they call it. He's on a full disability discharge and gets regular checkups at the VA hospital. They've been doing a nice job keeping up with him, actually. Once his momma died, God rest her soul, it's just been the two of us. He gets lonely, I know that. I try to keep him busy, but he spends a lot of time on his computer or out in his sheds.”

“You weren't concerned when he didn't come home last night?” McKenzie asked.

Johnson poured himself another cup of sludge. “Naw. He likes to carouse, sometimes. He's got himself a widow woman up near Pleasant View. She was the wife of a friend in his old unit. He goes up there to see her at night, once in a while. She's a nice girl, churchgoing. Bit soft in the head herself, but they manage. When I came home from the
grocery yesterday and he wasn't here, I just assumed he was up with her. Guess y'all had come to take him away though, huh.”

“That's right.”

“So are you going to tell me what he's done, or do I need to guess?”

Taylor hated giving bad news to parents, regardless of the age of the child or their misdeeds. “Sir, your son has claimed that he was involved in the murder of seven teenagers in Green Hills on Halloween night.”

He shook his head. “Nope. Wasn't my boy. He was here with me on Halloween.” The small mouth shut firmly.

“He also claims that he's the king of the Vampyre Nation,” McKenzie said.

The old man closed his eyes briefly, shook his head. His voice was soft. “That's just his sickness. He came back from that war all kinds of messed up in the head, talking about vampires sucking the blood out of his body. Started sleeping all day and roaming around at night. Filed his teeth into them stupid fangs. I never saw no harm in it—he doesn't do anything. He talks to some of his kind on the computer some. They have themselves a fine old time. But he'd never hurt a flea.”

“Sir, you understand that we will have to execute this warrant regardless. Your son knew details about the crimes that weren't released to the press. And he was caught on film at several of the crime scenes. So we know he wasn't home with you.”

“Must've left after I went to sleep. I have a scanner in the living room. He likes to listen to it. I'm sure he heard about it from that and decided to go check it out.”

“Sir, I appreciate that, but we're going to have to search the house anyway. We'd best get on with it.” She stood, plunked her cup in the kitchen sink. “I'll just go get Simari.”

McKenzie stayed put with the old man. She knew he was going to pump him for more information, left him to it.

Marcus and Simari were ready to get going, both leaning
impatiently against Simari's patrol car. Max was leashed and had his nose to the ground, quivering.

“Marcus, why don't you start in the house. Mr. Johnson mentioned his son likes to putter in the sheds. I thought Simari and I could take a look at them.”

He nodded and pushed off the car, taking a set of purple nitrile gloves out of his pocket as he left. Taylor watched him go, then turned to Simari.

“So, think Max can do a little snooping for me while we're here?”

“Of course. Drugs?”

“That's what I'm hoping. Let's go look around.”

They took a path that led to the right of the house, curving back toward the hills. The backyard was as tidy as the front—azaleas and hydrangeas and crepe myrtles cut back for the winter, dogwoods and tulip poplars spread across a vast expanse of still-green lawn.

“Man, he must spend hours on this,” Simari said. Max had his nose to the pea-gravel pathway, snuffling.

“I bet it's beautiful in spring. I love dogwoods.”

“Why, LT. How romantic of you.” They shared a laugh, the gravel crunching beneath their boots as they walked. The sheds were one hundred yards ahead, three of them, low to the ground, painted red with white trim, like the side of a barn.

They passed a small fire pit, the scorched remnants of leaves and twigs gathered at the edges, like someone had stuck a stick into the hole and stirred. Simari held up, let Max smell it. He didn't hit, so they kept going.

When they were twenty yards from the sheds, Taylor saw Max begin to vibrate. “Something here,” Simari said.

“Yeah, no kidding. Does he have different signs for different kinds of drugs?”

“No, but he'll bark when he hits something he knows. He's great with pot and cocaine.”

Taylor could smell the acrid scent of acetone, and
stopped. “How's he do with meth?” she asked, just as Max let out a vicious howl.

“He's pretty good with that, too,” Simari said, eyebrow raised in a dry salute.

M
ax had been right on the money.

The three sheds in the back of the Johnsons' property held a sophisticated methamphetamine lab. After a quick glance inside, Taylor pulled back and got the warrant amended, called in the experts from the Narcotics Unit to come and take the lab apart. Meth labs were tricky, dangerous territory for those who didn't know what they were doing—and not much better for those who did. She glanced into all three sheds carefully. Two held all the tubes and barrels she recognized, all flammable, with box after empty box of pseudoephedrine thrown into the overflowing trash cans. The last shed was equipped as a chemistry lab. For cooking up batches of dosed Ecstasy, perhaps? She put a priority rush on everything.

Mr. Johnson had said his son was a chemical engineer. He obviously wasn't too soft in the head if he could still cook meth.

She went back to the house. The commotion had Mr. Johnson upset—McKenzie was trying to get him calmed down. Taylor caught his eye and signaled for him to come join her.

A few moments later, they were standing on the porch of the Johnson house.

“Meth lab in the back,” she said. “Has he given anything more on Barent?”

“Either he's a twisted old man and a brilliant liar, or he really does turn the other cheek.”

“Probably a bit of both. Marcus find anything?”

“Yeah. You should probably go on up there. I'll keep Mr. Johnson from getting in the way. We're going to be late for Ariadne.”

Two large, white vans were pulling into the driveway. The drug boys were here. Taylor hoped they didn't all get blown up.

“Lincoln can handle her for the time being. I'm willing to bet money that this is the source of our tainted drugs. The third shed looks like a chemistry lab. I'll bet that's where the Ecstasy came from.”

“That would be a nice coup, wouldn't it?” He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

“But why in the world would he turn himself in, knowing we'd come up here and find all this?”

“Honestly, I think the man is in a bad way. From what his father tells me, he's had a terrible time since he got back from the war. Apparently, he was the sole survivor of a tank explosion—the tank got hit by a SCUD missile. They were providing cover for his unit and it all went to smash. He mustered out after the war, but he's never been the same since that event. He went steadily downhill from there. Gulf War syndrome is tricky—they don't know if it's caused by something that was in the air over there, a bacterial infection, heavy metals, chemical weapons or what. It can manifest physically or emotionally.

“If he was simply unstable to start with, the loss of his comrades could be the precipitating event. He's so far into the vampire world now that I doubt anything could pull him free. He must have had a fit of conscience, knowing he sold the drugs that killed those kids. He could have wanted to be a part of it all. I don't know. I'll have to get his VA records
pulled and talk to his treatment doctors there to get a full picture.”

“So where is his tie to our suspects?”

“That's what we have to find out. Juri Edvin got his drugs from somewhere.”

“Possibly Barent? They run in the same crowd, most likely, if they're both into the vampire scene. It can't be that expansive here in Nashville.”

“Probably. You'd be surprised at just how pervasive these countercultures are.”

“Okay. I'm going to go see what Marcus has, and then we can start heading back into town.”

She went inside through the kitchen to the foyer. She took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. She could hear Marcus, followed his voice down a long hall to the third bedroom on the right. She turned in and stopped dead.

The room was draped in black-and-red velvet, with photographs of wide, gaping mouths, fangs dripping with blood, throats thrown open in a scream, every few inches. The effect was startling. She felt like she was about to be bitten, eaten, from every corner. A huge canopied tester bed—probably brass once, but painted black—with black sheets and pillows, stood in the center of the maelstrom of mouths. She risked a quick glance under the canopy—yes, more mouths there.

The room smelled like old things, rotting blood and moldy leaves, overlaid with some sort of sickly sweet incense. Taylor breathed through her mouth, looking around.

Marcus was sitting at a desk that was covered in a shaggy black fur throw, the computer on and running.

“This is…interesting,” she said, chills running up and down her spine. “It stinks in here.”

“No kidding. I feel like I need a shower, and I haven't touched anything but the keyboard. I've got the creeps sitting in here. We should just take the computer with us—it's loaded with information. Looks like Barry is a first-class
drug dealer. He keeps transactional analyses of what's working and what isn't, listings of buyers and resellers. And lots of vampire shit.”

“Did you see any familiar names on that list?”

“Yep. Juri Edvin's on there. So's Susan Norwood, though they both go by their nicknames, Thorn and Ember.”

“Bingo,” Taylor said. “That should be enough to rearrest Susan Norwood, right?”

“We'll have to prove that Susan Norwood and Ember are one and the same, but yeah, there's enough here to send her away for a long time.”

“Excellent. That's easy enough—the Edvins only know her as Ember. They should be able to ID her with no problem. Is Barent making all of his own drugs, or is he buying, too? It would be nice to give the Specialized Investigative Unit a cut of this.”

“I can't tell that. This is just what he's selling and to whom. I've already called Gerald Sayers—they're waiting for us. He wanted in.”

“Great. This is right up his alley. Okay, grab the computer. Do we need to amend the warrant to include anything else?”

“No. I've already called Tim Davis, asked him to ride on up here and do a search. He can bag and tag anything else that we need. I think we need to get back and get to work on this. We're awfully close.”

He flashed her a grin, looking younger than his years, and she felt herself grinning back. A good morning, all in all.