Beneath the Cracks (40 page)

"Hey, could you drop me off at Downey
Division?  Conall, Briscoe and I are stuck out here without a
vehicle, and I drew the short straw getting back to the city to
pick up a replacement."

"Sure," he grinned.  "Hop in.  I'm
ready to roll."

I glanced around – one last look to make
sure no one who noticed I was leaving would care, and scrambled
into the van.  Exhaustion hit me before we were through the
gates.  I apologized for being poor company, curled up as best
I could in the passenger seat and indulged in a power nap.

Darkness – and fog – had fallen by the time
the crime scene tech pulled behind the building at Downey
Division.  He shook my shoulder lightly.  "Hey, Dr.
Eriksson, we're at Downey."

I rubbed my eyes and sat up.  Short
trip.  I thanked him for the lift and slipped inside the back
of the building.  I watched until the van was out of the lot
and driving down the street before returning to my car. 

The smart move would be going upstairs to
search the names on the list provided by Ben Karen.  I had a
feeling that Briscoe and Conall, not to mention Darnell, were aware
that I lied again, and that Downey might be the first place they'd
look for me.  I couldn't wait another two hours for them to
catch up to me, nor could I endure another vote by committee on who
would close this case and how that would be accomplished.

I climbed into the Expedition and retrieved
the list from my purse.  Most of the names were women, which I
had noticed when I originally scanned the list.  That had been
my mistake.  Now one name jumped out at me.  I cursed my
oversight.  Jessica Blake.

I thought of the young man at the shelter
who so slyly pointed me in the direction that led to the first
clues about
Preacher
being fingered as a cop by the patron's
at Uncle Nooky's bar. 
Shit.  Was that a calculated
move to learn what the police were doing about the death of one of
our own?  Blake is probably a fairly common name.
 
Still, I don't believe in coincidences, which was what my internal
dialog kept returning to. 

Johnny's penthouse was a hell of a lot
closer to Downey Division than my home in Beach Cliffs.  Would
the guy at the front desk let me up?  I threw the car into
gear and decided to give it a shot.

A glance at my eyes in the rearview mirror
gave me pause.  I looked like death warmed over.  Then it
hit me.

Maya probably didn't know a thing about what
had happened at Dupree Farm in the last eighteen hours.  And
the tech left her with a laptop from the morgue for her web cam
autopsy of Dr. Denton on Saturday.  MSUH was blocks from my
current location.

I changed plans and ended up waving the
badge at hospital security after arriving at the last thirty
seconds of visiting hours.  I slipped into Maya's room. 
She was sleeping soundly.  I didn't disturb her. 
Instead, I woke the computer left by Forsythe. It illuminated one
corner of the room, and I began searching the police records for
Jessica Blake.

She wasn't listed, nor was Jason as Crevan
determined last Tuesday, but expanding the search for anyone named
Blake arrested yielded one astonishing result.  Lucas Blake,
alias Batshit Crazy, served two years for possession of
methamphetamine with intent to sell. 

My lips rolled inward to mute the cry of
surprise.  Why would he cooperate with me if he was part of
any of this?  Then again, he wouldn't be the first low level
lackey who didn't have the sense to shut up when the police started
asking questions.  I thought about his behavior the morning we
spoke. 

"Good grief.  Was he flirting with
me?"  Had libido prompted Batshit Crazy to be one of many –
how had Uncle Nooky put it –
too dumb for their own good and
flappin' their jaws
?

Curiosity prompted me to search another
name.  Jackson, Nicholas.

This time, I wasn't able to suppress the
gasp when his criminal record displayed on the computer
screen.  There was no long hair and unkempt beard.  On
the contrary, Nick Jackson didn't look a bit like Uncle Nooky with
short hair and a trimmed goatee.  I stared at the picture and
tried to imagine him without the beard and long salt and pepper
hair.

"Oh my God."

The picture was Nick Jackson, without a
doubt.  What stunned me into disbelief was that it conjured
the image of the bald man sitting next to me while Batshit Crazy
shared too much information, the man who threatened me, the one
with the anarchy symbol tattooed on the side of his neck.  And
if my mind's eye was correct, shaving Uncle Nooky's head and
cutting his beard would've revealed a familial familiar face.

"They're related."

I backed up the search for the surname
Jackson only.  The list was longer than two names, but
something told me based on the ages of Nick and his kin, that my
best bet based only on age would be Kim Jackson.  The first
name almost made me reconsider.  I pulled up the file.

That was when the rest of the case came into
perfect focus.

My hands started to tremble the deeper I
read into Mr. Kim Jackson's criminal record.  Drugs, illegal
weapons possession with intent to sell, menacing with racial bias,
manslaughter…how was this guy not rotting in prison
somewhere?  If anyone deserved it, he did. Then again, this
was Darkwater Bay.

I remembered one of the last rants I'd heard
from my father.  He had given testimony in court against a man
accused of beating his child to death, and because of a legal
technicality, the charges were dropped before the conclusion of the
trial.  It was one of the murders that New York State tried to
tack onto the charges against Wendell, because he had been so
distraught to see a child killer walk free, he was a suspect when
the wrongfully freed father was found floating in the Hudson River
with a bullet in his brain. 

Dad hadn't defended his actions.  He
hadn't confirmed or denied.  Completely circumstantial
evidence hadn't convicted him, even on the coattails of being
caught after robbing an armored car with Marie. 

That memory, in the context that I recalled
it, helped me understand why Dad had done it.  Sometimes man's
justice fails the victims of crimes.  I thought of our
homeless men, of Detective Cox, even about Batshit Crazy. 
Menacing with racial bias.  The hate speech spewed at the
Kostas family by the bikers.  Cyanide.

I shut the laptop computer and slipped out
of Maya's room.  Cell phone in hand, I called the lab. 
Billy answered the phone immediately. 

"Helen!  Where are you?  They're
going nuts looking for you!"

"I'm on my way back out to Dupree Farm with
my car," I lied.  "Have you had a chance to look at any of the
cassava tubers yet?"

"Yeah, I was trying to find you at the farm
which was how I found out they were freaking because they couldn't
find you.  Why aren't you answering your phone?"

"I fell asleep on the drive back to Downey
and must've slept through the ringer.  What did you want to
tell me?"

"I sent samples off for rapid analysis when
I got another idea."

"What?"

"I diced some of it and sautéed it."

"Billy, tell me you didn't eat poisonous
plants that weren't properly processed!"

"Of course I didn't.  I did however,
test them after cooking, which should've reduced the amount of
cyanide even a little bit, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, it didn't.  The cooked cassava
was just as toxic as the fresh tubers.  Is it possible that
your mad scientist was trying to create cassava root that would
remain lethal no matter how much someone tried to process it for
safe consumption?  I know it sounds crazy.  I mean, a
hell of a lot of people use this stuff as a staple in their diets,
don't they?"

The final piece of the puzzle fell into
place.  "Dear God."

"Helen?"

"Do me a favor.  Call Briscoe and
Conall and tell them to come back to Darkwater Bay
immediately.  I think you just solved the case."

"I did?"

"Make the call."

"Where should I tell them to meet you?"

"Uncle Nooky's Bar and Grill."  I hung
up before Billy had time to respond.

The string of Harley Davidson motorcycles
along the curb was maybe a quarter as long as it had been
twenty-four hours ago.  I no longer wondered how these guys
could afford to hang out in a bar all day long.  They weren't
yet aware that they'd all been fired.

I pushed the door open to the rundown
establishment.  Again, the din dropped to a low murmur at the
sight of me, possibly in part because of the damaged bikes lined up
in the street.  Uncle Nooky was behind the bar.  Our eyes
locked and held for a moment before he grinned.

"You back to buy more Heineken,
Eriksson?"

"Not tonight, Nick."  I perched on a
stool and leaned over the bar.  "I came to see you."

"I'd be delighted to hear it if it weren't
for the fact that we're back to being all formal and shit
again.  I thought you were over that, Eriksson."

"Tom Denton is dead."

"You don't say.  How'd the dumb bastard
die?  Did he harass other folks like he did us?"  Nooky
chuckled and gouged his elbow into the gut of the bald man I
immediately recognized as Kim Jackson. 

He was too rotund to be the man we observed
on the surveillance video at division, the one who poisoned
Denton.  So which one did it?  My eyes scanned the room
and saw more baldness than hair. 
Shit
.

I refocused on what I did know, could
prove.  "He wasn't so dumb after all, as it turns out."

"Well, he never showed it around here. 
Let me pour you a drink – on the house."

"You got anything non-alcoholic?"  I
arched one brow in a silent challenge.

"Can't say that I do, and the water outta
the pipes in this place tastes like it comes all the way up from
Mexico."  Another chuckle and his sense of humor elicited the
same from those within earshot.  "So if you aren't here to
drink, and you're not here for more information about Tommy Denton,
and you're calling me
Nick
again, I guess that adds up to
official police business, huh."

"There was another victim discovered down
the street last night.  Did you hear about it?"

"Some homeless sap again?"  Nooky
poured a beer and took a long swig.  He belched loudly. 
"Was that how it went,
Helen
?"

"I think we both know better than that."

The bar grew too quiet, colder, unfriendlier
if such a thing were possible.  Several patrons got up and
left.  The rumble of bike engines outside offered an eerie
backdrop to the struggle underway inside.

"If we're playing twenty questions –"

"We're not, Mr. Jackson."

"Well now, I haven't been called
mister
anything for a very long time.  We must be
getting super official now," he sneered.

"Do you know someone named Jessica Blake,
drives a delivery van for a local dry cleaning company?"

"Can't say that I do, but I doubt Blake is
all that uncommon a name."

"Yes, I'd have to agree with you.  In
fact, I had the same thought myself.  However, Jessica Blake's
brother sold methamphetamine.  I believe she knew a lot of
people who sold or even used meth.  I can prove she helped
borrow
a police uniform and that whoever used it, left a
whole lot of sweat when he wore it into Downey Division Saturday
morning to kill Tom Denton.  Call me crazy, but I thought it
was just a little too coincidental that a woman named Blake helped
kill Tom Denton after another man named Blake identified Denton
just a few days before when I asked about him in this very
bar."

"Okay," Uncle Nooky's grin was
agreeable.  "You're crazy."

"I started wondering why Tom Denton had to
die.  I mean, he was the goose that laid the golden egg. 
The man was a walking, talking gold mine for someone like...
Mr.
Blake, a man who liked to use methamphetamine."

Some of the smugness bled out of Uncle
Nooky's face.  "If he was so damned important to Mr. Meth, my
money's on the fact that he didn't do jack shit to Denton."

"Then the body last night – poor old Batshit
Crazy.  He just had to open his mouth, didn't he?  Surely
the rest of this neighborhood knows to keep their mouths
shut.  And then a
cop
of all people comes in here, and
Batshit starts singing like a canary."

"There was a reason people called him
Batshit Crazy.  There's a reason we all got our nicknames,
detective."

"I might've never found Tom Denton without
that tip.  I frankly prefer Batshit Crazy's given name to his
moniker around here.  Do you know what that name was?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea."

"His name was Lucas."

Uncle Nooky snorted.  "Sounds like a
pretty faggoty name to me.  No wonder he liked bein' called
Batshit Crazy."

"Lucas
Blake
."  I paused and
watched both men behind the bar.  The level of tension, not to
mention interest in what I had to say grew exponentially.  "I
expect that people in Darkwater Bay are used to – how did you put
it, Nick, paying a donation to the police – and going about their
business without a worry in the world.  I didn't take the bait
when you cleverly suggested that's why I came into your bar the
other day.  But I'm a woman.  What could I possibly
know?  You weren't really concerned as much as your bald
friend was when Lucas Blake told me about Jake Cox, the man you
called Preacher.  But when we detained Tom Denton Friday
night, you started worrying about what
he
might tell
me.  What choice did you have?"

"You should be writing fiction,
Eriksson."

"The mistake was how you had him killed,
Nick.  It linked whoever killed Denton to the murder of Lucas
Blake.  With Denton's profession, didn't you consider that we
might want to take a look at his research at Dupree Farm? 
Once we got a warrant, it was just a matter of time until I found
Denton's
other
research project.  The guys from the
crime lab are still out there tearing the place apart. 
They've gathered a lot of finger prints and physical
evidence.  How long do you think it'll take before one of
those prints matches yours?"