A Garden of Vipers (22 page)

“I don't know what you're suggesting.”

“We need a top-flight investigative type from the Montgomery area. A guy with deep connects on the political side, where everything happens.”

“I don't know anyone like that, Harry.”

“You know someone who would.”

“Dammit, Harry, I can't call Dani and ask her to…”

Harry went to the stereo and snapped off the speakers. The room filled with silence. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.

“She messed you over. She knows it. She'll have the guilts and be vulnerable. Use it, Carson. She goddamn owes you.”

“You want me to call her? Just say…what? I'd like to come over, we need to talk?”

Harry's voice got quiet.

“I've got a little experience in this area, bro. She wants to talk. She needs to talk. All you got to do is aim what she talks about.”

I stood in the center of Dani's living room and held her in my arms, looking over her shoulder. I had never seen so many flowers in a room where there wasn't a corpse. Explosive bouquets in vases. Crystal tubes holding lone roses. Sprawling vats of carnations. Kincannon seemed to have some kind of flower fixation. I enjoy the scent of flowers, but her house reeked with the damn things.

I'd arrived five minutes earlier. We'd engaged in a tentative fashion, stilted
Hello
s and
How you been
s, broken sidelong glances, and finally, touching.

The full embrace with failing words.

Then, finding the words. The explanation.

She leaned back, her eyes red and wet and swollen, blond hair matted to a damp cheek.

“I didn't mean to hurt you. Buck just happened. Buck and I dated several months before I'd met you, stopped. Then he came by last month, just to float the notion about my becoming an anchor. It started out as dinner.”

“But you fell into…old ways.”

She looked away. “Yes.”

“I was always working, Dani,” I said. “I wasn't there for two months.”

I admit distraction. I admit stupidity. I had taken our relationship for granted for weeks. But I also knew she only had to grab my hair and tell me her feelings, and I would have changed the situation.

Or so I wanted to believe.

I said, “Are you serious about him? Kincannon? Is this relationship everything you want?”

Something changed. Her eyes turned to a dimension far away. She looked like she was stepping through a door with one chance to retreat before the door closed.

“Yes…,” she said, the word hissing away.

“Then everything will be for the best.”

She put her hands on my chest. Agitation shivered through her face.

“He's very caring, Carson. He calls every hour at least. Look at all the flowers. He's going to teach me to sail. I've never—”

I felt a rush of anger. “You don't have to sell him to me, Dani. I don't like Buck Kincannon. And I'm not going to change.”

She dropped her hands loose to her sides, stared at the scarlet carpet.

“Of course.”

She walked across the room. A realization came to her eyes.

“This is the last time you'll ever be here, in this room. In my house.”

“Yep.”

She turned away, dropped her face into her hands. “What have I done, what have I done…”

I went to her, held her shoulders. She remained hunched over, tucked into herself.

“What have I done…”

“Dani? Are you sure you're all right?”

She spun, took my face in her hands. “Oh God, Carson, I'm so sorry. For my stupidity. For everything. If there's anything I can do…”

I pulled her close.

Be careful around Buck Kincannon,
I could have said.
Watch yourself. Clair Peltier thinks they're dangerous, unstable, unhappy people capable of…

Instead, I put on a sad face and a bewildered voice and said, “I dunno, Dani, maybe there's something on this you could help me with, just a name. It'd save me a week's work….”

 

I left Dani sprawled on her couch, sobbing. Inconsolable. In the last few minutes she had fallen into a world where her grief was within some private internal domain. I took one last look at Dani's home, knew my hours there were over. I stepped outside and pulled the door shut.

“Excuse me, who are you?” a voice said.

I turned to face Buck Kincannon striding up the steps. In the drive was an automobile that looked fresh from a wind tunnel. His cologne moved in advance of his body, something light, almost feminine. Kincannon wore a gray linen suit, blue shirt, lavender tie with a small hard knot. Not a wrinkle anywhere. I wore a coffee-stained thrift-store jacket over faded jeans, and was too many miles from my morning shower.

“I'm Carson Ryder.”

Neither of us made a move toward shaking hands. He nodded, made a show of waggling his forefinger at me, a remembrance.

“Right, I recognize you from the party. I liked the cowboy getup, something different, funny. You're just leaving, right?”

The last line he delivered double entendre, the slight smirk at the corner of his lips saying,
You're history, loser.
The bright teeth sparkled with innocence. I made no answer as we moved past one another in the disengagement dance. I was walking away, he was moving toward the door.

He paused, snapped his fingers.

“You're a detective, aren't you? I've heard a few things about you.”

He hit the word
few,
like I was a guy who stopped by every couple of weeks to mow the lawn.

“Really?” I said. “I've heard a lot about you.”

He canted his head, grinned, raised an imperious eyebrow. It looked like a pose for a menswear catalogue.

“From the news?” he presumed.

“From Harry Nautilus.”

Kincannon pursed his lips. Shook his head. “Sorry. The name doesn't ring a bell.”

He dismissed me with his back. Started to knock on the door. I said, “You worked with Harry Nautilus on a project a few years back, a sports venture.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Bringing Tiger Woods to town for the Magnolia Open?”

“Putting together the little ball field up in Pritchard. The one for the poor-as-dirt kids.”

He froze before his knuckles knocked the door. Turned to face me. The glittering eyes had gone flat. I looked into frosted black marbles.

“I'm afraid your friend must be mistaken. I don't recall it.”

I gave it a two-beat pause.

“That's strange, Buckie. Folks up there remember the incident. Which probably doesn't bother you a lot because they're poor. But I also hear the blue bloods of Mobile wouldn't wipe their asses on a Kincannon. Enjoy your evening.”

I winked and walked to my truck without looking back, feeling Kincannon's mute, blind hatred every step of the way.

It felt good.

 

Twenty minutes after leaving Dani I sat on Harry's gallery. Harry sat in the glider sipping a beer. He'd traded work garb for a tie-dyed tee heavy on the red, lavender shorts, size-14 leather sandals. He'd moved the red-frame sunglasses to the crown of his head.

I reached in my pocket, pulled out a slip of paper.

“Guy's name is Ted Margolin,” I explained, passing the slip to Harry. “He's local, with the
Mobile Register
. But he handles state politics, and that means Montgomery. Good and fast and connected, according to what I could get from Dani.”

Sobbing as she wrote Margolin's name and number. Apologizing again and again. Our yearlong relationship exploding around us and I'm lying to wrangle information.

“Connected to the cops?” Harry asked. “The administration side, people with access to records?”

“As much as any reporter could be, I guess. Dani says the guy's almost sixty, worked the beat a long time.”

“Who's opening the lines of communication?”

“Ms. D. said she'd call the guy tonight, pave the way.”

If she could pull herself together. If she hadn't told Kincannon my request, him saying, screw the cop, let him get his own information. Or maybe she'd already forgotten about it, busy romping with the Buckster in a house stinking of flowers.

Harry said, “You tell her anything about what we're—”

“Just the fake story, Harry. She wasn't really listening. I got the feeling her life's a bit complicated.”

“Complicated how, Carson? She's keeping her toesies warm with…”

I raised my hand like a stop sign and said, “Enough.” Buck Kincannon was history.

For the moment.

 

I declined Harry's offer of supper and started for home. The moments with Dani ached in my belly, a physical pain, like being punched. Then I remembered a kind and generous offer that had been made to me, and cut across town, heading west. It was nearing seven p.m., the shadows long, the air hazy and golden.

Before her divorce two years back, Clair Peltier and her husband had lived in a piece of high-money real estate on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. It seemed more museum than home, centuries-old furniture, art on marble pedestals, glittering chandeliers. A gilded harp, for crying out loud.

The lust for ownership had belonged to her husband, Zane Peltier. Clair preferred experiences to objects. Reading, cinema, the symphony, travel…all stirred her pot harder than a fancy car or an armoire by Louis the something or other. When divorce loomed, Clair found herself in the enviable position of having a husband with both money and a need to avoid news coverage. Today she lived in a small but elegant house on a woodsy acre in Spring Hill, the champagne section of town.

Driving down her street, I saw Clair in her front yard. She was painting her mailbox, brush in hand, a small paint can at her feet. The methodology was pure Clair: dip brush, remove excess, carefully paint one square inch of mailbox, repeat.

I pulled into her driveway, leaned out my window. “I didn't know women in Spring Hill could paint anything but their nails.”

“Don't give up your day job for Second City, Ryder.”

She finished another perfect square inch, set the brush on the can, walked to the truck. She wore jeans and white running shoes and a long-sleeved khaki shirt with tails nearly reaching her knees. A blue bandana held her hair back. After her divorce she'd gotten into yoga and health-type foods, getting lithe and limber and losing twenty pounds.

“What brings you to my driveway, Ryder? You lost?”

I slow-tapped my thumbs on the wheel. “Listen Clair, uh, you said that if I ever needed someone to talk to…”

“Let me put away the paint, clean my hands—”

“I didn't mean now. But thank you.”

She put her hand on my forearm, concern in her eyes. “If something's bothering you, Ryder, please, let's talk.”

I said, “I know you're busy with society things, pathology things, a heavy social schedule. Tell me what's a good time for you.”

“I've done all my society things for this month, Ryder—a fund-raiser for the symphony. Pathology I do at work, not home. As for…what was the third option?”

“Your social life, like dates and whatnot.”

“I've got two guys hitting on me, Ryder. One's a banker who waxes rhapsodic about money market funds, ugh.”

“The other?”

She made a purring sound deep in her throat. “A hottie, I think is the term. A charming and intelligent man, self-made multimillionaire, one home in Mobile, one in Provence, a pied-à-terre in Manhattan. We were out together last night.”

“Oh.”

“I'd be real interested if he wasn't eighty-four years old. What are you up to Saturday, Ryder?”

“My new routine: nothing.”

“Want to come here? Or my office at work? I can close the door, we can talk as much as you want.”

“How about my place?” I suggested. “We'll sit on the deck, watch the dolphin-tour boats go back and forth.”

She turned and walked back to the mailbox, her hips graceful beneath the denim. She dipped the brush in paint, poised it over the mailbox.

“You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Ryder. How about sevenish? That work for you?”

I pulled away from Clair's and aimed my truck for Dauphin Island when my phone rang: Harry. I pulled to the side of the road.

“You at home, Cars?”

“Still in town, Harry. I was just talking to Clair.”

“You're at the morgue?”

“I stopped by her house for a few moments.”

A two-beat pause. “After you took off I nuked some leftover Chinese. Then I sat down and pulled out a stack of Rudolnick's cases to scan while I ate, plow through another half inch. There was a magazine mixed in with them, a psychiatry thing. Some pages fell out.”

“Pages from the magazine?”

“Pages tucked inside the magazine.”

“Those are subscription forms, Harry.”

“Whatever pills you're taking, Cars, they're working. These ain't subscription forms. They're notes in the doc's handwriting. Comments on a case, I think, but this is the kind of thing you know more about.”

“How about I stop by in the a.m., eight or so?”

“There's something about the notes, Carson. I'd really like you to look at them now.”

I was sitting on Harry's gallery in minutes. It was verging on dusk, but the gallery was well lit and the skeeter truck had been by minutes earlier. I had no idea of the chemical composition of the gray fog that poured from the mosquito-control truck, but like everyone who lived near coastal marshland, I didn't care as long as it kept the bloodsuckers at bay.

“Here's how it was when I grabbed it up, Cars.”

Harry handed me the spring issue of the
Journal of American Psychiatry
from two years back. It was Rudolnick's personal issue, sent to his home address. Harry handed me the magazine by its spine, pages open toward the floor. Several pieces of white typing paper fell to my lap. Six pages, I counted, held at the upper-right edge with a paper clip.

There was only one small block of handwritten text on the front page:

“Get ready for an interesting trip,” Harry said.

I turned the page. Handwritten notes, sparse, some simply a line or two. There was no name, only “Subject.”

The pages were dated, the dates starting three and a half years back. I read the first entry.

I continued reading, wondering if Rudolnick had stuck the pages in the journal for later transcription and forgot where he had put them. The entries were sporadic, averaging six weeks between each. Most were three or four lines, much in the vein of an entry the second year:

The next entry, a few months later, was longer. And more foreboding:

Two more mundane entries—the subject seems to enjoy watching “Freddy” playing outside—then, a month after, a bit of an insight into whoever is described:

I read, fascinated, a brief entry occurring two months later.

There were several more observational visits, Rudolnick commenting on the patient's(?) state of mind. The doctor's observations seemed circumspect, veiled, almost as if he were watching from behind a glass window. The next long entry was the penultimate entry. I noticed the writing was looser, less controlled, as if written in a hurry or in a stressful situation.

Then, a week later, the final entry:

Five weeks later, Rudolnick was dead.

“What do you think?” Harry asked when I had finished reading.

“I think there's a decent chance he was treating our killer,” I said, a cold knife tracing circles over the base of my spine.

“I figured you'd agree,” Harry said.

 

Near midnight, I got a call from the reporter, Ted Margolin. Dani, bless her, had contacted him. She had told Margolin two local dicks were wondering how certain political procedures worked in Montgomery.

“Naturally,” Margolin said, “it intrigued me.”

“We're interested in a former Mobile County officer, Benjamin Pettigrew. He is not—repeat,
not
—the subject of any form of investigation. We'd like to know, in general, how Pettigrew got hired.”

“I got a real good source for that kind of stuff,” Margolin said. “I'll need time to make some calls, maybe wait until a friend can get to some locked files. How about we get together late tomorrow morning?”

I didn't try to hide my surprise. “You'll have it by then?”

“If it's have-able. Oh, Detective Ryder?”

“Yes?”

“I haven't talked to DeeDee in a few months. She sounded pretty down. She all right?”

“She's fine,” I said. “Something to do with the change in the weather.”

After wrestling with the notion for several minutes, I decided to call Dani, thank her for the assistance. Maybe buoy my conscience. Her number was still first on my speed dial.

Tap. Connect. Ring.

“Hello?” Her voice tentative. “Carson?”

“It's me, Dani. I just wanted to let you know that—”

“Buck's here,” she whispered.

I clicked the phone off and stared at it for several seconds. I pulled up my call list and deleted her number.