Her Last Scream (22 page)

“T. Nathaniel Bromley?” Walls said. “He’s outta my league, Harry. I’m just a ham’n’egger who deals with real people with real problems – salt-of-the-earth types.”

Preston Walls held his hands palm-up at his sides. He was in his mid forties, five-eight, overweight. His suit was mouse brown with a limp carnation dangling from a lapel. The gray in his thinning, ponytailed hair had been darkened with cheap dye, but the stud in his ear was a flawless ruby and the car at the curb was a high-end Porsche, the tag stating LGLEGL. The pneumatic blonde receptionist was a call girl Nautilus had arrested several times when she was in her thirties and Nautilus was in uniform, twenty years ago. The receptionist had been filing her nails when Nautilus and Hargreaves entered and had pretended they’d never met.

“You know everything about everyone, Walls,” Nautilus said. “Lawyers, judges, prosecutors. You sweep dirt into a file and hope some day you can use it to buy a break for one of your scuzzy clients.”

Walls shook his head. “Harry, Harry, Harry … my clients are good people trapped in bad situations. I’m less a lawyer than a social worker, a champion for the poor and downtrodden.”

Nautilus rolled his eyes. He’d been in the office for two minutes and was already craving a shower. “I recall one of the clients, Walls: Ronnie Hill. Didn’t poor, downtrodden Hill drive a purple Benz, five-hundred class or whatever?” Nautilus turned to Hargreaves. “The damn thing had a twenty-grand stereo system: whenever Hall cruised the ’hood he’d be followed by falling glass from all the busted windows.”

Walls smiled at Hargreaves. “He’s a great kidder, Harry is. But the truth is, Ronnie Hill is a product of the system. When society wouldn’t give him an outlet for his entrepreneurial instincts in society, he built his own business.”

“Moving a half-key of coke a week,” Nautilus added.

Walls sighed. “Had the young Ron Hill been given a chance, he might have owned a Coca-Cola distributor-ship, Harry. We all failed poor Ronnie: the community, the educational system, the –”

“Where’s the guy now?” Hargreaves asked.

“Holman prison,” Nautilus said. “Every time Hill got busted for moving dope, Mr Walls got him out. Last year poor, downtrodden Ronnie Hill shot at a competitor, missed, hit the guy’s twelve-year-old sister instead. She’s now a paraplegic.”

Walls frowned. “Why are you here, Harry?”

“Bromley, remember? I need to know why Nate’s former partners are treating him like a fence-jumper from a leper colony.”

“Bromley, Bromley …” Walls tapped his fingers on his desk. “Seems I do recall a few sub rosa murmurings around that name. Colorful stuff.”

“Colorful how?”

“Listen, Harry, I’ve got this client, Marcus Flatt …”

“Don’t do this to me, Walls.”

“C’mon, Harry. Marcus is a good smart kid, a striver, a mensch. His case comes before a judge next week, prosecutor is Willis Baines. You know Baines, don’t you?”

Nautilus stuck his hands in his pockets to keep them from Walls’s neck. “I’ll check into the case. Maybe I can wangle a little something if Flatt’s not a psycho.”

“Marcus is ambitious, Harry. He needed venture capital to open a strip-o-mat and –”

“A what?”

“A combo laundromat and strip club. Great concept, right? Marcus even had matchbooks printed up:
We Take Off Ours While You Wash Yours
. Problem is, Marcus kept getting turned down for loans. Then a few dollars belonging to his employer disappeared and –”

“How many dollars?”

“Twenty grand or so. Maybe thirty.”

Nautilus pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “I’ll check with the DA’s folks. See if they can back off on the sentence a bit. No promises. And that’s only if you give me enough dish on Bromley.”

“Have a seat, Harry. And you too, pretty lady. I’ll give the dish I know. It’s only a little appetizer, but delicious …”

The trailer bounced hard, clattering down what must have been one of the world’s most-rutted roads, Rein thought, the back of her head banging the wooden floor. Rein never figured she’d be happy to be jammed into a livestock trailer, its floor covered with hay and manure, its window hatches locked tight and the door slammed shut. But the hay had smelled like salvation after the fumes of gasoline.

She’d heard a crunching of feet over grass, the scrape of a flare dragged across the striker, the whoosh of fire and the run of boots back to the truck. Rein had felt the trailer shudder and grab, creaking as it gained speed. Then, the sound of tires over highway and the twang of country music drifting back from the cab became all Rein heard for hours.

The banging stopped as the trailer angled downward and jolted to a halt. The door squealed open, Tommy outlined against a blue sky with a bag in one arm and jamming a sandwich in his mouth. She saw nothing past her captor but endless brown dirt studded with scrubby brush and rock outcroppings. Tommy pulled himself inside to squat beside the women, peeling back the tape from their mouths.

“Time to piss and shit and eat. You can think about screaming, but the closest people are two miles away and going eighty miles an hour. If you do scream, the next thing that’ll happen is you’ll be screaming even louder, because it’ll be me making you scream.”

He waited for the women to nod acceptance, then gave them a drink from a half-liter of Mountain Dew. He loosened Treeka’s wrist ropes, waved her to stand. “Come on, baby. Time to get emptied out.” He grinned. “Me too.”

“Sure, baby,” Treeka said, stumbling toward the end of the trailer. “Whatever you want, hon.”

Rein heard footsteps grow muted in the distance. The manure in the still trailer was attracting flies and they crawled over her face. The heat was climbing fast and her sweat made the hay stick to her body. She heard grunting in the distance, knew Tommy was raping Treeka.

Ten minutes later they were back, Treeks pulling herself into the trailer. “Come on, woman,” Tommy said to Rein, leaning to loosen her ropes. “Your turn.”

Rein jumped from the trailer, saw it was parked in a depression behind a looming rock formation. She figured she was to be sexually assaulted, but all Tommy did was lead her to an arroyo and stand a dozen feet distant as she pulled down her pants. She glanced at her panties, feeling the signs of her approaching period.

“Do you have to look at me?” Rein said.

Tommy’s face wrinkled in anger. “I’ll look right up your pussy if I want.”

“OK,” Rein said, realizing the phone was a no-go, if it even had power left. “Do what you want.”

“I want to watch you, bitch, I’ll fucking watch you. Shit and git.”

Rein kept the phone rolled in her panties and relieved herself. Tommy hustled her to the truck. He upended the bag he’d brought from the cab, littering the trailer floor with convenience-store sandwiches, beef jerky, packs of chips and cans of soda.

“Git to eating or go hungry.”

Treeka said something muffled, her head turned away. “I didn’t hear you, Treeks,” Tommy said. “Talk up when I ask a question … ’less you feel like giving this dusty ol’ truck another washing.”

“I said thank you for the food, Tommy. I was getting hungry.”

Tommy was so close to Reinetta she could smell his odor: stale sweat, cheap deodorant and one of those acrid, old-time colognes pushed on television by faded sports stars, probably the same stuff his father had used. He looked at Rein and grinned yellow teeth.

“You know what I think, pretty lady?” he said. “I think if you’re gonna break bread with Treeka and me, you should give the holy blessing.”

Rein didn’t think she’d heard correctly. “What?”

He grinned and stood, pushing back his hat, gnawing on a lunchmeat sandwich, half-moons of dirt beneath his fingernails. “You people s’posed to be so spiritual an’ all. Give us one a them nigra prayers to eat to.”

“I just want to eat.”

“Give us a prayer, please, Marla,” Treeka said, turning to Rein. Beneath her breath she said, “Don’t make him mad or he’ll hurt you.”

“You lissen to little Treeks. She wants a prayer. Right, Treeks?”

“Yes, Tommy. We should have a blessing before we eat. Please, Marla?” Treeka’s eyes were imploring.

“Dear heavenly Father,” Rein recited, her voice scarcely past a whisper, “bless this food and thank you for providing it.”

“That ain’t no kind of prayer,” Tommy snarled. “I want a fucking good prayer.”

“I’ll do it, Tommy,” Treeka said. “Let me do the blessing, babe. I ain’t said a prayer in a while.”

“Yeah, you go ahead then.”

Treeka bowed her head. “Bless this food, dear God, and thank you for all the other blessings in my life, like this good and righteous man. Thank you for providing him to me and making him strong and wise and everything I could hope for. I am just a humble woman, dear God, so please help me to see the error of my ways and know that Satan got inside my heart and told me lies. Help me to understand my transgressions and to learn from them and please make me the wife this good man deserves, though he deserves so much more than me. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

“Ain’t you gonna amen Treeka’s prayer?” Tommy said, staring at Rein.

“Amen,” she said, thinking,
Give me a chance to kill you
.

“Louder,” he snapped.

Rein was hot and worn and aching and angry. She said, “Leave me alone.”

“Don’t,” Treeka whispered.

Tommy Flood’s fingers curled into a fist. He glared at Rein. “What did you say to me, slut?”

“I said to leave me alone, you pathetic excuse for whatever you’re attempting to be.”

The man’s eyes widened as if slapped. His hand slashed at Rein’s face and knocked her backwards. “I can do what I want, bitch!” Flood screamed. “I’m allowed to do everything but kill you. You got that?”

“What are you talking about?” Rein gasped.

“You ain’t mine,” he said. “But I got permission to hurt you however I need to keep you in line. You got that?”

Rein nodded and went slack in the hay. Tommy slapped the tape back over the women’s mouths, re-set the ropes. “I don’t care about you,” he snarled to Rein before slamming the door. “I got back what’s mine and pretty soon you’ll be where you’re supposed to be, too.”

Cruz and I were in the motel. It was mixed-feelings time, both relieved Rein wasn’t dead, but knowing it was a matter of time. We knew the women had been held captive for days before being mutilated, then held a bit longer before being killed. Though grim, it was the distant star on which we’d hung our hopes.

My phone rang and Cruz looked up from her reports. I shook my head, the screen said CLAIR
.

“Howdy, Clair,” I said. “What’s up?”

“You wanted me to stay in contact with the forensics people in Utah and Denver, try and figure out what the mucilage is on the bellies of our victims?”

We were hoping Clair might find an esoteric polymer used in a specific industry or process, anything to advance our cause.

“You’ve got something?”

“Nothing on the glue,” she said. “It’s a common PSA – pressure-sensitive adhesive.”

Another dead end. “Like you thought, duct tape or similar?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Thanks, Clair. Gotta go –”

“Hang on, Carson. I started reviewing uterine findings for rape or object insertion. I didn’t find anything like that, but I did note an odd commonality among the victims.”

“What’s that, Clair?”

“All three uteri were in the early stages of shedding endometrial lining when the process was stopped. By death, of course.”

“You’re saying that these women were killed …”

“Shortly after their periods started, Carson. Could be coincidence, but I figured you should know.”

The blonde and thirtyish receptionist at Blackwell, Carrington and Associates not only spoke as if afflicted with an interior broomstick, Nautilus thought, she walked that way too: back straight, nose high, long but formless legs scissoring in choppy strokes. Her dress was white and double-breasted and fit very well.

The pair had cooled heels in the wood-and-brass reception area, Nautilus looking out the windows while Hargreaves seemed entranced by portraits of the legal staff, each with a copywriter-quality bio extolling the virtues and specialties of the practitioner.

“You’re very lucky Mr Carrington agreed to see you on such short notice,” the receptionist sniffed as she opened the door to a long corridor.

“Maybe we knew the secret word,” Hargreaves said. “Y’know, like Open Sesame.”

“What does that mean?”

“Never mind.”

Thus aimed toward the corner office, Nautilus and Hargreaves wandered at sightseer’s pace. At corridor’s end a visually resplendent Arnold Carrington appeared, no hand offered, nothing but a flick of a finger to indicate entry into his personal burrow with its Oriental carpet, bronze sculptures of cowboys on horseback, paintings of ships and seascapes in ornate frames. The corner office aimed eastward across the green and blue of the Mobile river delta. Carrington’s desk, the size of a single bed, held nothing save for a green-shaded lamp, a computer monitor, and a leather pad. The lawyer closed the door as Hargreaves and Nautilus walked to the trio of chairs semi-circled before the desk.

“No need to sit,” Carrington announced. “You won’t be here that long.”

Hargreaves sat.

Carrington frowned. “I’m not making myself clear, Detective. My statement is simple: This firm’s relationship with Nathaniel Bromley is over. Severed. There is nothing more to add.”

He turned back to the door and put his hand on the door knob, announcement over.

“How many female lawyers do you have here, Mr Carrington?” Hargreaves said, not moving from the chair.

“Did you see the photographs out front?”

“Indeed I did. Eight out of a legal staff of twenty-seven.”

Carrington nodded. “A bit less than one-third. Not bad, and improving.”

“The average age of your male staff is about, what? Forty-five or thereabouts? I’m not counting the old guard, I’m talking rank and file.”

Carrington narrowed his eyes. “I seem to be missing your point, Detective Hargreaves.”

“Of the female staff, most look to be early thirties. When were the ladies hired, Mr Carrington?”

“What are you getting at, Detective?”

Hargreaves stood and faced the lawyer. “The question is so simple I’m going to supply the answer. The majority of the women were hired recently, most fresh from law school. There a reason you didn’t hire women in the Bromley years, Mr Carrington?”

“That’s ridiculous. We hired several women and –” Carrington froze, realized where he’d been led.

“Where are they today?” Hargreaves asked.

“We’re not here from affirmative action, Mr Carrington,” Nautilus said, seeing where his partner was going. “Women are dying. We need help and that’s why we’re here.”

Carrington absorbed the words slowly and stared between the two detectives.

“Women dying?”

“Not in pretty ways,” Hargreaves said.

“Y-you suspect Nathaniel in these … these crimes?”

“No suspects, only suppositions,” Nautilus said. “You say Bromley’s not associated with this firm. Prove it by telling us why you’ve put the big wall between yourselves and your former star attraction.”

Carrington again looked between the pair, as if gauging their resolve. His shoulders slumped and he sighed, taking his place behind the desk, looking suddenly shrunken.

“This is between us?” he asked.

“I have corpses,” Nautilus said. “I need answers, not pacts.”

Carrington took a deep breath, as if bracing himself for his own words.

“Whenever we’d add an associate, a new hire, Nathaniel always found reasons why women on the short list were wrong for the firm. They were too strident, or too ugly, or too devious.”

“Devious?” Hargreaves asked. “Bromley had some meter to judge, what … deviosity?”

“Nathaniel claimed the ability to sense that trait and vetoed the candidate.”

Hargreaves said, “Judging by the photos, you gave him plenty of latitude.”

“We all had veto power, the partners.”

“But surely now and then you’d hire a woman? Aren’t women a majority of law students?”

“Several times the other partners felt strongly about a female candidate and Nathaniel would give in.”

“They just didn’t last long,” Hargreaves said. “Was that it?”

“Nathaniel seemed to fixate on the women, finding mistakes in their work, haranguing them, spreading rumors they were lesbians. The women eventually left for less-stressful employment options. They always received a generous severance and excellent recommendations.”

“How very thoughtful of you,” Hargreaves said.

“What was the final straw?” Nautilus asked. There was always a final straw.

Carrington walked to the window, stared out across the flat and spreading delta. “The company party at the end of the fiscal year. Spouses and significant others are invited. It’s a grand occasion: bonuses are distributed, champagne flows … Nathaniel arrived with a woman, very pretty but … not overly educated. He was drinking too much, telling people his date was dumb as a rock but she could, uh …” Carrington glanced at Hargreaves, embarrassed.

“Go on, Mr Carrington,” she said. “I’ve heard it all twice.”

“He said she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. Nathaniel made several remarks in this vein, as if they qualified the woman to be with him.”

“And?” Hargreaves asked.

“The woman heard one of his remarks and took offense. They wandered from the general party, squabbling. A few minutes later I was called to a back office, along with two other partners. Nathaniel and the woman were in a back office and she had a bloody nose and mouth. Her dress was torn and she was crying. I wasn’t the first person in the room, that was Ted Clark. Ted said when he arrived Nathaniel was lifting the woman’s head by the hair and smashing her face into a desk.”

“Jesus,” Nautilus whispered.

“Long story short: the woman was extremely well compensated. Nathaniel Bromley’s relationship with the firm changed inexorably and he was asked to leave.”

“Gone the next day?” Nautilus asked.

“I wish it had been that easy. Nathaniel said we were eunuchs for taking the side of a whore. He threatened legal action, obviously.”

“Your response?”

“Like most firms with similar client lists, we maintain relationships with several security-oriented firms.”

“Private investigators,” Nautilus translated.

“Nathaniel had an emotional response to the dissolution of the partnership. A more rational man might have realized where this would lead. Or maybe it was his monumental ego. We enlisted a team of investigators led by Clarence Trump.”

“I know Trump,” Nautilus said to Hargreaves. “Good and fast. Works out of Birmingham.”

“Fast as you say Mr Trump is, Detective, it took his staff three months to unearth the story. It seems Nathaniel was married years ago, something none of us knew. Nathaniel had so terrorized his young wife that she sought escape. He told her he would destroy her if she left him.”

“She got on the train,” Hargreaves said.

Carrington looked puzzled. “If you mean she used some kind of women’s network to disappear, you’re correct.”

“Where was, is she?” Nautilus asked. “The wife.”

“Somewhere in the Northeast, living a happy life with no wish to ever return.” He paused. “That’s not what we told Nathaniel.”

“You told Bromley she’d come back and tell her story.”

“Nathaniel feared damage to his reputation. He relented and our relationship was over.”

“And in the end, everything was hushed up,” Hargreaves said, doing the dusting-hands motion.

Carrington jutted his considerable chin. “The firm’s reputation should not suffer for the actions of a single member of staff.”

Hargreaves smile was without humor. “And should the women who were let go discover the reason was solely their gender, they could slam this place with a hefty lawsuit. Is that the way it goes, Mr Carrington?”

“I’ve been honest with you. I’m trusting your discretion.”

Nautilus and Hargreaves retreated from Carrington’s office. The plush carpet soaked up their footfalls as they walked the wainscoted hall to the lobby, Hargreaves leaning toward Nautilus.

“Can we stop for that Lysol now, Harry?”