Close to the Broken Hearted (8 page)

Her head jerked up and her eyes met mine. There were tears in hers, but they looked surprised.

“Did I say somethin' wrong?” I asked, worried I was about to get in trouble.

She took me in her arms. “No, Abe. You just said possibly the single most right thing you've ever said.”

“I did?” I asked, my voice muffled by her shirt. I wasn't even sure what I'd said. This conversation had stopped making total sense to me a while back.

When she let go, I asked, “Will you tell me what it says about Pa now?”

“Well, for one thing, the woman you met? Addison? She probably really is your aunt.”

I couldn't help but smile. I'd met family. “Really? Is her last name Teal like mine?”

“Yup. Least it was last time these records were updated. Unless she got married since. And you do have two grandparents livin' in Georgia. I
knew
he had parents. He
had
mentioned them from time to time, but only in passing. He told me he didn't get along with them and sort of left it at that. From what little information I gathered from your pa, your grandpa ran the house like some sort of military sergeant. I never dreamed they was livin' barely three hours away the whole time. The way your pa talked, it was like they was clear across the country or somethin'.”

“I have another granddaddy!” I said.

“And a grandma,” my mother said.

“Wow! This is really great! I can't wait to tell Dewey! Are we gonna meet 'em?”

She looked at me sternly. “I dunno yet. That waits to be seen.”

“Waits for what?”

“For me to decide.”

I looked down at the table. “Oh.”

My mother flipped to the last page. I could tell there was something on that page she really didn't like.

“What else does it say?” I asked.

“Nothin' that concerns you.”

“Please? He was my pa and I don't know nothin' 'bout him.”

She looked into my eyes for a second.

“Please?” I asked again.

“Fine, I guess.” I watched her swallow hard before she continued. When she did, her voice was much quieter than before and it sounded like she might be holding back tears. “Says here your pa was married once before. Can you believe it? You know how young he was when he married me? He'd barely turned twenty. Well, he was even younger when he married her. He was only eighteen. They lasted two months.”

“That makes you mad?”

“He shoulda told me.”

“So you could get mad at him?”

“So I would know.”

“What would you have done?”

“Gotten mad at him.”

“I'm bettin' that's likely why he never told you,” I said. Why did this all seem so easy for me to understand and yet my mother seemed to be having such a hard time with it?

“He
still
shoulda told me. For better or worse. We vowed that. I'm supposed to know all the ‘for worse' parts.”

“But this was before your weddin'.”

She glared at me. “Why don't you run along and play with your swords? I want to be angry some more and you're just makin' it tough.”

“There anythin' else in there about Pa?”

“Nothin' interestin'.”

“You sure? You said that 'fore and then you tol' me he was married once before.”

She lifted the papers off the table and snapped them in the air. “Well, let's see. You wanna know his fishing license number? His driver's license number? How about his Social Security information? I can give you some of his tax records if you'd like. Any of this sound like somethin' you'd like to be let in on, Abe?”

I pushed myself off the chair. I could tell she was done showing me the file. “No,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know 'bout the family stuff.”

“You're welcome.”

“I'd really like to meet 'em,” I said.

“I know you would.”

“And I know you're scared to,” I told her.

“I know you know. Now take off. You're too old for your own good.”

“I know,” I said, and left the kitchen.

 

Leah watched her little Abe leave, wondering how in the world she'd managed to raise him all by herself and still have him turn out so well.

Then she thought of Miss Sylvie and realized she was going to turn out okay, too. It was just going to take some time, was all. Eli Brown had moved back to Alvin already and, even though Leah hadn't yet paid him her little visit that she promised Sylvie she would, Sylvie seemed to be handling the situation just fine. Leah would go see Eli sometime in the coming week. She wasn't worried. The man was harmless. She'd seen him when he'd been moved from Talladega to the Birmingham Work Release Center and the man she'd seen was a kind and gentle man, not a man worth being a mite scared of.

Sylvie was just afraid of her memories. And they were memories being amplified because they were coming from a five-year-old girl.

No, Leah wasn't worried one bit about Eli Brown. That's why she hadn't
bothered
going to see him yet.

Despite Sylvie's fears, nothing bad was about to happen.

Or so Leah thought.

Then, four days later, Sylvie found her cat, Snowflake, lying dead on her back porch.

L
eah was at the station when the call came in. Chris had picked up the phone and immediately Leah knew it was Sylvie by the way he rolled his eyes. “Yes, Miss Carson,” he said in that condescending voice that made Leah want to pistol-whip him. “And what can we do for you today?”

Sitting at her desk, Leah tried to keep looking busy, as though she wasn't interested in listening to Chris's side of the conversation, but the truth was that she was eavesdropping because if she didn't take an interest she knew nobody else would. So, while she pretended to be going through files and looking things up on her computer terminal, she was actually on autopilot, eavesdropping on Chris sitting at the desk beside her.

It was probably pretty obvious to Chris. The station had only switched over to computers in the last year and Leah still wasn't really sure how to use hers properly. Chief Montgomery liked to go on about how one day all the computers in all the police departments across the country would be connected and share a central repository of information, but that all sounded like science fiction to Leah. Right now, any data they wanted in the system, they had to put there and store on floppy discs that they kept in a cabinet. They had probably five hundred such discs and, once the data was inputted, it was easier to work with. But inputting it was a big job. This was why the only data Leah had access to was recent events that happened in and around Alvin. For anything else, they still had to order background checks or reports, usually from places like Mobile.

She knew just enough about her computer to get by. She wished she knew as much about it as her son did. Sometimes, after hours, when it was just her and Abe (and occasionally his friend Dewey), she'd let them go on the terminal. They were much better at it than her and even discovered a game they liked playing on it called
Super Slither.
Leah had no idea the computer even had games. She still didn't understand why it does.

But for now, while she listened, she pretended she knew what she was doing. Even if what she was doing was only scrolling the bright green text of her contact list of other stations and emergency numbers up and down the dark green screen.

“Is that so?” Chris asked. “And how long do you figure he's been dead?”

Dead? Who's dead?
This immediately grabbed Leah's attention. She no longer pretended to be playing with her contact list or shuffling around papers. Now she was just in her seat, obviously paying attention to what Chris was saying to Sylvie.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “
She
. How long do you figure
she's
been dead?” He wrote something down on the pad in front of him. “And what was the cause of death?” He wrote a bit more and said, “I see.”

She? Well, for someone being dead, Chris was remaining awfully calm. It better not be the baby, or there'd be hell to pay. In fact, she couldn't think of anyone it could be that would allow for his demeanor to be so inappropriate at such news.

“Yes,” he said finally, still remaining calm as a salamander sunning himself atop a rock in mid-July, “of course we'll send an officer out right away.” He sat back in his chair, half turned, and gave Leah a smile and a wink. “Yes, I'm aware of the severity of the situation. You just sit tight now, all right? Okay. Bye, Miss Sylvie.”

Reaching over, Chris dropped the receiver onto the telephone and said, “And now the community tax dollars shall once again be spent on yet another crazy quest for that woman.”

Leah didn't share Chris's lackadaisical attitude. She was anxious to find out about the details of the call. “What was that about? Who's dead?”

Chris laughed. “You're not gonna believe it. It's her damn cat. She found it dead on her back porch. Now she wants to file a police report. I guess she suspects murder?” He made a gun out of his forefinger and thumb and pointed it at the floor. “Pow!” he said, lifting the barrel of his finger-weapon. “That'll show
you,
you mangy cat. Next time you'll know better than to mess with us.” He laughed even louder this time.

Still Leah felt anxious. “What did she say happened to it? What killed her?”

With a shrug, Chris said, “Damned if she knows. She said she can't see no reason why the cat should be dead. It isn't like it's very old or nothin'. She sounded a bit loopy, if you ask me. I think she was pretty messed up about it.”

“You think?” Leah asked, standing from her seat.

“Where you goin' so fast?” Chris asked.

“To Sylvie's. To check out what happened to her damn cat. Some of us have to take our jobs a little more seriously.” Grabbing the keys to her car, Leah headed straight for the doors.

“It's just a goddamn cat!” Chris yelled in her wake, his sentence getting cut off by the sound of the door slamming shut behind her.

Leah had been getting more and more annoyed with Chris's attitude at work lately. It had gotten progressively worse since he single-handedly made what could've been called “Alvin's biggest bust” (and
was
in some papers even as far up as Birmingham).

Chris had brought down a cocaine deal that went bad for the people involved, and he did it pretty near all by himself (although a lot of it happened by utter good fortune) and seized over one and a half million dollars' worth of coke off the street, according to the values the feds in Mobile came back with.

Stories of exactly what happened that night tended to vary. Some said the deal was in progress, some said Chris caught them by surprise as they were leaving their hotel room with the drugs to make the deal. Some said both they and Chris caught each other by surprise. There were stories involving civilian passersby getting involved and helping Chris take down the gang. Some reports said Chris was responsible for two of the men. Chris said that he nabbed all four men, and had planned his entire takedown well ahead of time. At any rate, four men did go into custody. Ethan was just happy Chris was still alive.

What that amount of drugs had been doing passing through Alvin was anybody's guess. Chris only got wind of it from a last-minute tip. Then he did a one-man stakeout, which Leah thought was incredibly irresponsible of him, not bringing her into the loop. He could've easily been killed. Drug dealers don't carry around product worth millions of dollars without also carrying around weapons.

But it all worked out in the end. Chris rounded up the two or four men (depending on who you listened to) and got the coke. He even made all the papers right across the state and, for five or six days, Alvin was actually put on the map, so to speak.

Leah found it funny that she could solve crimes of girls going missing and turning up murdered and raped and that didn't make nothing but the local news, but when cocaine was involved, everyone was suddenly interested.

Anyway, the bust happened, oh, must be going on nine or ten months or so ago now, and Chris seemed to have been resting on his laurels ever since. It wasn't that he didn't do
anything;
it was just that his work lacked its usual dedication, commitment, and luster. If it stayed like this much longer, Leah was going to have to say something to Ethan about it. She hoped Chris would figure it out and work things through on his own, though. She hated going above people's heads, or behind their backs, or around any other body part. It all just sounded so sneaky.

Chris did know his stuff, and he was dead on with a bull's-eye when Leah arrived at Sylvie's. Miss Sylvie was truly messed up by what had happened to her cat. “Thank God you got here so fast,” she said, opening the door before Leah was even fully out of her car. “I didn't know what to do. The cat—she's . . .”

Leah tried to calm her down. “It's okay, honey. I'll take care of it.” Sylvie let Leah into the house. She had the baby on her shoulder. The baby was awake but quiet. The moment Leah was inside with the door closed and locked behind her, Sylvie started pacing the floor, rubbing the baby's back. Leah got the impression she'd been doing this ever since calling the station.

“Where's the cat?” Leah asked.

“Right outside the back door.”

Opening the door, Leah found the animal lying lifeless right on the back step. It looked as though it just fell over and died. Putting on blue latex gloves, she squatted down and, touching the body as little as possible, turned it different ways looking for any sort of mark that might indicate a cause of death. She expected to find some blood somewhere. Maybe the cat caught itself on some barbed wire or a piece of sharp metal. God knew there was enough garbage lying around this backyard for anything to kill itself on if it tried hard enough.

But there was nothing. No puncture wounds. No blood. Not a mark on its body. Rigor mortis had begun setting in, so the body was stiff. Leah didn't have the background needed to discern any time frame as to when death might have occurred.

But the lack of obvious means of death niggled at the back of her mind.
Something
killed this cat. Normally, the first thing Leah would suspect would be a coyote. But if it had been a coyote, there'd be no body left here for Leah to be examining. Whatever it was that took this animal's life did so without leaving a single mark. Not even a scar. And, like Sylvie told Chris on the phone, it wasn't like Snowflake was old. She wasn't even a year yet, by Leah's calculations.

Something wasn't right. Leah could feel it. She hated that feeling, that gut feeling she got all the time when something “wasn't right.” Her own daddy and Police Chief Montgomery always said it separated the good detectives from the bad ones. She hated it because it meant she had to follow it, even though, rationally, she knew it was crazy.

But she wouldn't be a good detective if she didn't. So, turning around, she started back for her car.

“What're you doin'?” Sylvie asked, a slight panic in her voice. Leah suspected she thought Leah might just be leaving her alone again to have to deal with the dead cat by herself.

“I left my radio in the car. I'm going to call Chris. I want him to come out here, too.”

“So you suspect somethin's up?”

Leah looked into Sylvie's eyes, searching them for any emotion. It was uncanny how much she could feel that five-year-old girl staring back at her. “I don't know what I suspect, Sylvie. I just don't want to leave any stone unturned is all.”

Leah got into her car and radioed Chris back at the station, telling him to come by Sylvie's and bring the cruiser with the CSI kit in the trunk. Even though she could tell he was trying to contain it, Chris couldn't help cracking up. “Backup?” he asked, his laughter breaking up a bit over the radio. “For a dead cat?”

She steeled her voice and said loudly, “Chris. Get your ass over here, now.”

That got rid of his giggles but fast. “I'm comin',” was his only reply.

When Leah returned to the backyard, Sylvie was standing in the frame of the back door, purposely looking anywhere but down where the cat was lying basically at her feet. She still held the baby in her arms, but Leah was quite sure the baby had fallen asleep.

“You think same as I do, don't ya?” Sylvie said, whispering now, so as not to wake her daughter. “That someone killed Snowflake? That someone came into my yard and killed my poor kitty?” The poor girl was on the brink of breaking down. Leah didn't need that right now.

“I don't reckon I know
what
I think right now, Sylvie. I just reckon we gotta check this out as thoroughly as possible. Now I promised you I'd take your calls seriously, so I'm takin' this one as seriously as I can. That's why I called for Chris, understand? That's the
only
reason. Don't go readin' anythin' into this that ain't there.”

“You talk to Preacher Eli yet?”

That was a question Leah had hoped Sylvie wouldn't ask. “Not yet.”

“How come? You promised me that you would do that, too. He's been back in town over a week now, and here my cat winds up dead on my back porch. I'd say that's a mite coincidental, wouldn't you?”

“Now, Sylvie, I don't think Eli killed your cat.”

“Why not?”

“Because what would his motive be?”

“Just that he likes killin' things smaller than him. He killed my baby brother.”

Leah rubbed her eyes in exhaustion. She hoped Chris wasn't taking his time getting here. The last thing she wanted was to keep up this line of conversation with Sylvie any longer than she had to. “I will go talk to Eli Brown tomorrow. Hell, I'll go do it today if we get done here in time. You have my word.”

“I've had your word before. It's suddenly not meanin' so much no more.”

Wow. The girl knew how to make things sting, that was for certain. But guilt trips were something Leah was used to. She had two kids at home and one was a fifteen-year-old daughter who made Sylvie look like a rank amateur when it came to laying on the guilt.

“My word is my word, Sylvie. You take it any way you like. Folks around town know what it's worth. Main thing is that
I
know what it's worth.”

 

Fifteen minutes later Chris showed up, but the time seemed to go by so slowly that it could've been hours. He took one look at Snowflake on the porch out back and said, “Hmm. Dead cat. Yep. Dead.” Then he saw the look in Leah's eyes and his demeanor instantly changed. For the rest of the time he spent there, he was very professional and polite to Miss Sylvie, which made Leah quite happy. If he hadn't gotten rid of the attitude, she was ready to tear a side off him something fierce when they got back to the station. Leah could shout louder than Chris could. Besides, she had seniority. And her pa and Ethan Montgomery went way back. When it came right down to it, it was exactly like they said: Blood was thicker than water. And Ethan and her pa had been close enough to consider each other blood. You didn't turn your back on blood.