1 Motor City Shakedown (9 page)

SEVEN

The most disconcerting part of Issabella’s inspection of the crematorium was how the two big ovens looked so…nice. They were the same boxy, shiny-smooth types of machines you’d expect to find in a modern factory or high-tech laboratory. They had sleek digital controls. They were antiseptic in their unassuming efficiency. They had a kind of elegance.

Because of this, she found herself considering the fact that there were people walking around in the world who had helped to build the better death-oven. They’d made calculations about mass and burn rate and fuel efficiency. They’d consulted designers over aesthetic elements, and made compromises over appearance and ease-of-loading. Programmers had built a little computer to oversee the whole affair, and buried that hidden brain behind a user-friendly digital readout with touch-screen controls. Pamphlets were done up. Web pages, slogans, testimonials and marketing attack plans were all summoned up out of the conscious labor of dozens, nay, hundreds of industrious men and women.

And over backyard barbeques, the death-oven revolutionaries would affect fake-humility about their calling in life.
‘What line of work? Nothing much, Earl. It’s Earl, right? I’m sorry, I’m terrible with names and Judy has so many friends, you know? Good to meet you, too. Hmm? Oh! Well, my official title is lead engineer. Which sounds impressive, but it’s really not, believe me. Mostly just busy work like anything else. No, not bridges, Earl. Civil engineers work on things like bridges and that. Me, I’m in the commercial end of things. Furnaces. Sure, like that. How hot? Heh. Hot, Earl. Believe me, buddy, those babies burn hot as hell. Let me freshen that for you.’

She fiddled with them until she was able to get the loading doors open. Inside, they were clean and, apparently, well-scrubbed. She thought about being loaded into one of them, laying there while the computer brain counted down to the moment it would order the gas jets to ignite. She wasn’t as creeped-out at the idea as she would have figured she would be.

Opening her cell and checking the clock told her it was about time to call the game concluded. She’d been fairly idle in her inspections ever since she had taken her turn to search through the office. Confident that she had actually found the winning bit of information—even if she hadn’t quite worked out the reason
why
it was the winning information –she had contented herself with cursory perusals of the rest of the building. The bathroom had been unclean and dingy the way they are when under the sole dominion of men. The janitorial closet had been nothing more than what it was supposed to be.

While it was still in her hand, Issabella’s cell rang.

“Hey, Mom,” she said.

“Bella! So tell me everything.”

Her mother’s general opinion of her daughter’s career choices had experienced a sudden upward tick, so that it was currently holding just shy of ‘Unabashed Approval’.

“Actually, I’m right in the middle of something right now, Mom.”

“I am so happy for you. This is all so exciting, isn’t it?”

Issabella closed the door of the human-oven and smiled despite herself.

“It kind of is, yeah.”

“And that Mr. Fletcher is helping you get up to speed on things?”

The smile wilted as quickly as it had bloomed.

“We’re partners, Mom. Equal partners.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be.”

“I really am happy for you, sweetheart.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Is he handsome?”

“
Who? Darren?”

“That’s a nice name, isn’t it? Is he—“

“I have to go now, Mom.”

“—single?”

“Bye, Mom. Gotta go.”

She clicked the cell shut and stuffed it back inside her briefcase. Her fingers brushed against the papers she’d found in the office, the ones she thought would win her this game. Darren had been first to search the office, so she didn’t feel like a cheater for scooping them into her briefcase. If he hadn’t noticed the oddity in the papers, that was his own fault. She’d actually read them. She’d read everything in the office, except the pornographic magazines stuffed in the lowest drawer of the desk.

‘Who buys dirty magazines anymore?’

“Ding!”

She turned on her heel. Darren was in the doorway to the office, beaming with that playful, secret-filled smile he seemed to think everyone wanted to see all the time.

“Time’s up, kiddo,” he said.

“For
you
.”

He stepped to the side so she could walk into the office past him.

“That’s the spirit.”

*

After a few minutes of wrangling over who would go first, Issabella finally got fed up with it and yanked the papers out of her briefcase. She tossed them onto the desk. Darren was sitting behind it in, presumably, Vernon’s chair. He had his feet on the desk, legs stretched out in front of him. He gave the papers a quizzical frown.

“The bills?” he said. “Really?”

“Really.”

Darren shrugged, reached into his own briefcase on the floor beside him and withdrew a large red apple. Issabella smirked.

“An apple? Really?”

The apple made a crunching noise as he bit into it.

“Don’t be silly. I brought this with me. So, okay, tell me about the bills.”

“Okay,” she said, putting her hands in the air the way she did when she was going into lecture mode. She had taken litigation courses in her last year at law school, and somewhere in them she had settled on hand movement as being preferable to having her arms crossed in front of her. She paced in front of the desk as if it were the border of the jury box.

She said, “We know Vernon has a successful crematorium business. In fact, we know that he owes some of this success to the fact that he holds contracts with the county to dispose of unknowns and indigents.”

“All true,” Darren agreed around a mouthful of apple.

“We also know…hold on. I’m operating on the premise that there’s some wacky, nutso thing going on here other than our client’s behavior when he was arrested. I mean, this is your idea. I’m just playing pretend that anything we find here could be useful. Agreed?”

“I acknowledge that you are humoring me
. Continue.”

She nodded and resumed her pacing.

“We also know that Vernon operates a second crematorium in the Upper Peninsula. In fact, according to those bills, this second crematorium is in Marquette. Which, by the by, is the most populated city up there.”

“I did not know that.”

“I have a friend from there.”

“From law school?”

“Yep. She’s in a firm up there now.”

“Fascinating.”

“Alright. So here’s the big, weird thing that doesn’t mean anything in the real world, but we’ll pretend it does to get this game over with. Ready?’

Darren wiped apple
juice from his chin and smiled.

“Dazzle me.”

“Look at the utility bills,” she said. “His gas bills don’t jive with what we know. For this address, he’s being billed next to nothing. My apartment is using about as much natural gas as this place, and my place doesn’t come with a fancy people-burning stove.”

The air of self-assured victory Darren had been wearing faded. He leaned forward and snatched up the pile of bills.

“Keep going,” he mumbled, looking through the pages.

“Right,” she said. “And the place he has up in Marquette? Crazy high bills. He’s running the ovens up there round the clock from the looks of those bills
. Which doesn’t make sense at all. The biggest city in the U.P. is still just a little hamlet compared to Wayne County and Detroit. And he doesn’t have county contracts up there to push the numbers up.”

Darren continued reading for a minute, then set the papers down and took another bite from his apple.

“That’s really, really weird,” he said.

“I know.”

“What the hell is he doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Theories?’

“Not even one,” she said, and sat on the edge of the desk. “But that wasn’t our game. I found a really weird thing.
Really
weird. Despite all probability, I ferreted it out. So.”

“So?”

“So, you concede now. I’ll be gracious about my victory. We’ll find a place to have lunch. Then we’ll go back to my office—as I, you know, have an actual office that isn’t a unicorn-infested bar –and we will start writing motions in anticipation of the murder case our client is going to face. Here. In the real world.”

Darren stood and made an ushering motion for Issabella to sit where he had been.

“Madam Prosecutor is mistaken is she believes the defense wishes to waive closing arguments,” he said, and the two of them reversed position.

“Hold on,” he said, walked back around the desk and leaned down next to her. He smelled faintly of cologne and apples. A lock of his hair brushed her nose. “Here we are.”

He straightened back up. There was a second apple in his hand. He put it in hers.

“I brought one for you, too.”

“Thanks,” she chuckled.

Once he had resumed his spot across the desk, Darren took on a sympathetic appearance.

“I’m sorry to do this to you,” he said. “Your case was good. Better than I expected, really. But I’m made of magic, Issabella. I am—“

“Ugh. Get on with it and stop stalling,” s
he said and bit into the apple.

“Alright,” he said. “The stunning find I’ve made here today—the find of all finds, really –was, admittedly, in an unlikely place. But, being the thorough and uncannily adept barrister that I am, I nevertheless—“

“I said stop stalling! I didn’t make you listen to this kind of nonsense.”

“Point taken. But—“

Darren’s cell phone started piping out “Sweet Home Alabama” from inside the vest pocket of his jacket.

“That’s unfortunate timing,” he mumbled as he pulled the cell out.

“That cell phone is just forestalling the inevitable.”

Darren answered, “Law office of Darren Fletcher. This is Darren Fletcher. How can I help you today? Yes, that’s right. I am, indeed. Alright, then.”

All the mirth and playfulness vanished from his face. His posture straightened and he was suddenly very stoic. Issabella stopped mid-chew and stared at him.

“I see,” he said into the phone. “No, that’s not necessary. I understand. No, not now. But soon, I assure you. Yes, that does sound ominous. I meant it to.”

He clicked the cell shut and tossed it absently onto the desk. His lips curled downward into an ugly scowl and he crossed his arms in front of him.

“Darren?”

He was somewhere else; somewhere that was darkening his expression by the second. Issabella saw in that long moment that within Darren Fletcher there was a capacity for fury. Right now, it was seething and roiling just under the surface.

“Darren. You need to talk to me.”

He blinked several times and looked at her, back in the here and now.

“Ve
rnon Pullins is dead, Izzy.”

*

Allen Phelps adjusted the Glock 19 in its waistband holster at the small of his back and said “Whoop whoop.”

A voice in his ear softly answered “What what.”

The Huron River was a brown line in front of him. The bank stretching away from the old, weather-worn dock where he stood was choking with cattails and dragonflies. He watched the fat, darting bugs and told himself to be patient. He was good at patience and good at silence. You couldn’t be an army sniper without improbable quantities of both.

The Huron was flanked on both sides by wooded, rolling state land-- an untouched corner of southern Wayne County known only to the most serious and dedicated of deer hunters.

He drew a long breath in through his nose and felt calm. Standing there in the evening hush, he mentally ran through what had become an increasingly unmanageable checklist of problems that needed swift, complete elimination.

‘Pullins
is closed out. After we do this mop-up here, we find Darnell’s pet psycho and close that out…then roll up north and finish with that junkie Indian.’

Even for a man like Allen Phelps, that was a lot of bodies adding up.

‘Fuck it, Al. One bite at a time. Take care of this little business and re-evaluate. Always re-evaluate. Adjust. Adapt. One hoodrat nutjob and a pill-popping Indian kid. Take them off the board and there’s nobody left to worry about getting chatty. Close the whole thing down. Then it’s all tits and beer.’

Before any of the three people approaching behind him were close enough to see him through the trees, he heard their heavy and uneven footfalls. It was the sound of men who had spent the entirety of their lives in a cement and asphalt world, their internal gyroscopes only attuned to flat and measured sidewalks.