Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (3 page)

“This isn’t a joke, Keye.” He closed the drawer too hard.

“Okay,” I said. “So what is it?”

“Exactly. What the hell is it? Because from where I stand somebody who feels they
have to label the goddamn silverware drawer is not ready to share their space.” He
leaned across the counter and grabbed his bagel. I didn’t move. I just sat there with
my coffee and watched him walk out.

My detective agency, Corporate Intelligence & Investigations (CI&I), sits in a row
of refurbished warehouses off North Highland Avenue in Atlanta. The dock door was
raised when I pulled into the parking lot. We can get away with this early in the
day. But by noon the sun is as hot as an arsonist’s match. Even our concrete offices
won’t stay cool. Atlanta’s weather had been extreme again this year. Summer came out
swinging, pummeled us with violent storms, then turned up the dial and took away the
rain. Television meteorologists were so friggin’ excited about tornadoes, then drought,
they were practically huffing into paper bags, reporting new watering restrictions
like they were brand-new commandments from God. I think they secretly hoped they’d
have heatstrokes or deaths by dehydration to report, which was probably preferable
to a television death by reporting gorgeous, hot weather every damn day.

My neighbors had their big doors up this morning too—the gay theater company, the
hair studio two doors down, and the tattoo artist and piercing salon on the corner.
The sounds from our businesses mingled like a scene from Hitchcock’s
Rear Window
—show tunes rehearsed, customers chatting from high swivel chairs while haircutters
buzzed around with scissors, a faint bass rhythm from the piercing guy, whose throbbing
music distracts customers while he drills silver posts into their nostrils. I smelled
the ovens from Highland Bakery as I came up the metal steps to the landing that had
once served loading docks. Actors from the theater company were clustered outside
around a tall metal ashtray, alternating sips of coffee with long hits off their cigarettes.

“Y’all are here early,” I said, and smiled as I passed. I’d been here long enough
to know that when actors show up for work before I do, it’s the final week of rehearsals
before the curtain goes up. Hell week, they call it, and the sheer terror of it wakes
them up early. I’d married an actor once, which was probably why I was taking pleasure
in their pain this morning.

I could hear my business partner, Neil Donovan, in the kitchen with our new and, well,
our only employee. Latisha had been with us nearly a month. To give you some sense
of Neil’s priorities, he was training her on the espresso machine.

“Morning,” I called out as I headed toward the fenced-in corner I call my office—the
brainchild of the overly enthusiastic design firm I’d hired to bring our old warehouse
into this century.

Latisha showed up in front of my desk. “Look what I made.” She
set down a cup with a foamy top. Her nails were lavender and so long they had a little
curve at the end. I find this creepy. She apparently finds it attractive. Latisha
is Tyrone’s daughter. That’s Tyrone Eckhart of Tyrone’s Quikbail, a substantial contributor
to my monthly income. I owed him a favor. Right now it was standing in my office in
a too-short skirt that matched the color of her nails.

I took a sip and licked froth off my top lip. “Delicious,” I said, then opened my
briefcase, handed her a receipt from APD. “I got Ronald Coleman last night. Get it
to your dad today so we can get paid. And I need you to stop by Nussbaum, Kaplan,
Freed, and Slott. Bernie called my mobile last night. They’ve got divorce papers they
want me to serve tomorrow morning.”

Neil came in holding his coffee and slouched into one of my chairs. He hadn’t combed
his hair or shaved. Golden stubble covered his jawbone and chin. He was wearing a
Cuban shirt and baggy white knee-length shorts, Vans slip-ons, plaid—the usual. His
lids looked heavy.

“Hey, I get to visit the offices of Assbalm, Complain, Fried, and Snot today,” Latisha
told Neil. She had taken to changing the names of our clients when she felt underappreciated
by them. Bernie Slott would forever be referred to as Mr. Snot after he was less than
overjoyed about being left on hold one day.

“Miss Keye, you ready to go over your day planner?” Latisha wanted to know.

I wasn’t. I was ready to drink coffee and stare. “Can you drop the
Miss
thing? I feel like I’m in a scene from
The Help
.”

Latisha held up a palm. “Oh no you did not just go there. Don’t even talk to me about
that movie. And then they had the nerve to turn it into a book!”

“I think the book came first,” Neil said. He was looking at his coffee mug, moving
the frothy top around with his index finger.

“Whatever. I’m just trying to be professional when I address you.” She sat down in
one of the two chairs across from my desk and crossed long, muscular, nineteen-year-old
legs. She was wearing white athletic shoes with girl-jock socks that had a little
fuzzy ball at the heel—lavender to match her nails and the skirt that barely covered
her ass. I reserved comment on how professional I felt that was. Truth is, Neil
and I had never run a tight ship. Life is tough enough on the outside. Might as well
have some fun. “Remember you told Fairy Chin, I mean Larry Quinn, you’d get on that
slip-and-fall this week,” Latisha told me. “He needs to know if she’s for real. Between
us, that silly ho did
not
slip on that milk.”

Latisha might be right. I’d done some checking myself. The woman was recently divorced,
two mortgage payments behind, and she’d had an injury claim pending against a former
employer. “What else?” I asked.

“Half a dozen deposition subpoenas for that nasty-ass criminal attorney,” Latisha
informed me.

Latisha had taken over a lot of the routine duties that had clogged my day—my schedule,
the filing, the endless trips to county courthouse clerk rooms, delivering the background
reports Neil and I compiled for the head-hunting agencies and employment services
on our client roster. She answered the phone and didn’t mind running errands. But
she had a mouth on her.

“I’ve got the Monday-night sweeps as usual,” Neil said. “Plus the background reports
for the headhunters.” We’d recently invested in state-of-the-art bug-sweeping equipment.
The money was great but we needed more business. The technology was constantly evolving,
as was our investment in countermeasures equipment. I prayed paranoia would seize
Atlanta’s corporate giants so Neil could lug his equipment out every day. I was beginning
to fantasize about a bank account so full and a business so functional I could have
an actual vacation—the beach, naps, hot sweaty middle-of-the-day sex, chocolate cake
for dinner, no alarms, no phones. But that’s just crazy talk.

“Can you get me a look at the slip-and-fall lady’s neighborhood?” I asked Neil.

He pushed himself up like an old man, made a little noise, half grunt, half sigh.
He was mopey this morning. Neil’s moody. He has a lot of drama in his romantic life.
That’s because he’s a philandering scoundrel. He’s also smart and funny and complicated,
and just shaggy enough to look like he needs a mommy. It really plays with the chicks.

He ordered the smart system in our super-wired office to bring
down the TV, and a silver, dungeon-like pulley system lowered the thin, flat screen
smoothly from the rafters. It is hands-down the sexiest addition to come from the
high-strung group of designers who swooped in a couple of years back. And because
the television is usually stashed neatly fifteen feet above our heads, it had survived
a thug who’d broken in and smashed up the place last month. The cops thought he’d
probably used a bat or a tire tool. We’d had to replace almost all the electronics,
including the ridiculously expensive panel that controlled the animation system Neil
had installed and trained to understand our voice commands.

Latisha lowered herself into one of the soft leather chaise longues scattered around
the office, stretched out, crossed her ankles. Neil’s busy fingers tapped at his keyboard
until a satellite image of Beecher Street SW appeared on screen. He took us on a virtual
ride down the street that made me dizzy. On a computer it’s fine. But on the big screen
it’s like a roller-coaster ride. I saw a few cars parked curbside, some good-size
oak trees lining the street. It’s a lot easier to hang out in neighborhoods with trees
and cars without being spotted.

“There it is,” he said, and we looked at a small frame house with a wide porch and
a yard spotted with patches of Georgia red clay that hadn’t seen grass seed in a few
seasons.

“I know that neighborhood,” Latisha said. “I got cousins on the next block. The West
End gets a bad rap, but those little neighborhoods are nice. You go there on a pretty
day and people are sitting on their porches. Not like those fancy neighborhoods where
you never see nobody in the yard. You ever notice that about rich white people? They
don’t come outside.” She looked at Neil. “What’s wrong with white folks anyway?”

The office phone rang. Latisha answered in her sugary-sweet fake-nice voice. “C, I,
and I. This is Latisha. How may I help you?” She listened. “May I say who’s calling?”
Another pause. “Hold, please.”

“Well done,” I said. She was getting better on the phone. The first couple of weeks
were touch-and-go. Turns out Latisha can be a little bit of a German shepherd.

“It’s a Sheriff Meltzer,” she told me. “Seven-oh-six area code.”

I had no idea who Sheriff Meltzer was. “Run that real quick, would you, Neil?”

Neil’s fingers skipped lightly over his keyboard. He could do this blindfolded. He’d
begun his hacking career in high school, a for-profit test preparation program, as
he called it, which really just meant he hacked the teachers, got the tests in advance,
and sold them. “Kenneth Meltzer. Hitchiti County sheriff. In his second term,” he
reported. “Central Georgia. Lot of buzz about speed traps. They’re housing state prisoners
at the County Jail.” Neil kept reading, his blue eyes quickly sweeping over pages
of information. “He’s bringing in a lot of revenue. The department is beefed up. Website
bio says Meltzer’s the youngest sheriff to serve the county. Thirty-three when he
was elected. Forty percent drop in crime since he took over.”

“So what’s he want with me?” I said, pressing the
SPEAKER
button on the conference table console. I had never been crazy about county sheriffs.
I’d worked with a few at the Bureau. They’re elected. It tends to skew their priorities.
“I apologize for keeping you on hold, Sheriff Meltzer. This is Keye Street. What can
I do for you?”

“Good morning, Dr. Street.” His voice was smooth with a rich, deep rumble. I thought
I caught a hint of the western United States in his accent. “Major Herman Hicks at
APD Homicide referred me to you, said you’ve worked repeat violent offender cases
with the FBI and with APD.”

I thought about the day I’d been escorted to my old convertible with a special agent
trailing behind me, the pathetic remains of my life at the National Center for the
Analysis of Violent Crime in a cardboard box. I had pushed toward the Bureau’s Behavioral
Analysis Unit with single-minded ambition and aggressively pursued the education in
psychology and criminology that would guarantee me notice there. And then I blew it
all to hell. It wasn’t the first time I had walked away from something with my tail
between my legs. I was never good at endings. Or perhaps I’m really good at them.
If you like drama, I mean.

“Do you have a minute to talk?” the sheriff asked.

“Of course.” I found paper and pen and sat down.

“My department received a call about three weeks ago,” the sheriff began. “A father
and son fishing a creek up here noticed an article of clothing caught up on the bank.
It’s a fairly isolated spot, away from the developed tourist areas, and there’s not
a lot of trash. So it was obvious. They pulled it out and realized it was a blouse.
We had a young woman disappear up here eight months ago. Word got around—”

“How young?” I interrupted.

“She was thirteen.”

“And it was her shirt?”

“Yes. According to the state crime lab, the skin cells they recovered from the collar
belonged to the victim,” the sheriff said.

“Did you recover a body?”

“We combed the area for a couple of days and didn’t see a thing, then went in with
cadaver dogs. We found her body upstream a ways. We also found the skeletal remains
of another victim. A forensic odontologist identified her as Tracy Davidson, also
thirteen years old when she disappeared. They were found at the bottom of a natural
embankment half a mile into the woods.”

“Same school?”

“No. But both girls lived in my county. And neither town has its own police department.
That makes it my problem. Tracy Davidson lived in Silas, twenty miles away from Melinda
Cochran, our second victim, who lived here in Whisper.”

I made a note.
2 victims. Female. 13. Silas, Whisper, 20 miles
. “They determine cause of death?”

“Blunt-force trauma to the skull on the first victim. Wounds are consistent with something
like the blunt side of an axe.”

Heavy with a good swing, I thought. Nice and quiet, nothing to disturb the serenity
of a Georgia forest. “And the second?”

“Could have been the same weapon, but he used the sharp side. Almost took her head
off.”

“How can I help, Sheriff?”

“I have two people in Criminal Investigations and they have their hands full with
meth labs and pot growers and robberies. We’ve never used a criminal consultant or
anything like that. How does it work?
What exactly did you do for APD? I guess I’m asking what happens if I hired somebody
like you.”

“The primary goal would be to evaluate the nature of the forensic evidence, and the
value of it. Interpret that evidence and behaviors at a crime scene in order to identify
offender characteristics, help investigators gain some insight into the offender’s
motivations, fantasy life, state of mind, levels of planning, evidence of remorse,
risk, method of approach and attack, analyze linkage in series crimes. It’s all meant
to assist with interview and investigative strategy and ultimately in the identification
of the offender.” I paused. “I want to stress the word
assist
, Sheriff. Criminal investigative analysts assist law enforcement. We’re not psychics.
We work from the evidence you provide.”