Late Rain (26 page)

Ben went back to Atlantic Avenue. Foot patrol, the weather continuing to confound the meteorologists, the hottest April in fifty-plus years, the driest on record, and the students on break going native under that sun, getting more than a little restless, and by the end of Ben’s shift, the holding cells were full, and Ben was awash in paperwork, and Mommy and Daddy and their lawyers were calling in or showing up at the station.

Ben was in the late stages of the day’s paperwork when a sergeant from Booking waylaid him.

“We got a real noise-maker in Holding,” he said, “keeps asking for you. Name of Leon Douglas.”

Ben checked his watch and walked quickly to the north wing of the complex and with enough badgering managed to get Leon released from the cell packed bar to bar with students and into an empty interrogation room.

Leon’s nose was angled in a new direction and one eye nearly swollen shut, and there were freckles of dried blood across the front of his shirt.

Ben asked what he got popped for and by whom.

“Receiving Stolen,” Leon said, “and Resisting. But neither one be the case. I’m in my car, couple guys ask can I give them a ride, I’m ok with that, then a blue and white pull up behind us at a light, the guys out of the car and running, leave all their shit in my back seat, and I’m the one get brace on account I give those two brother a ride.”

Ben knew Leon was probably the wheelman and let his version by, asking once again who the arresting officer was.

“Carl Adkin. That man, he could take a patent on mean.” Leon paused, looking around the room. “He come up my car, I put my hands on the top of the steering wheel so he can see both of them, and then he hollering to his backup and pulling his gun, saying I’m attempting to flee the scene. See, I got my hands where they suppose to be, but I forget to turn off the engine, and I’m trying tell Adkin ‘whoa’ and get out the car, but he’s not listening, and when he go to cuff me, Adkin claim I start with the resisting, and next thing I know my face is making friends with the pavement and my nose is broke.”

“Ok,” Ben said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“I be trying to tell Adkin over and over that I’m your Ear, and he need to talk to you,” Leon said.

Ben repeated what he’d said and then told Leon he’d have to take him back to the holding cell.

“Those college boys, they whiners,” Leon said. “Puke and whine all the day long.”

Ben repeated, once again, he’d do what he could.

“You need some motivation keep me in your thoughts,” Leon said, “I heard something from my second cousin about Wayne LaVell.” He paused, looking over at Ben. “My cousin, he work at the Palmer as a busboy there, and he say Wayne LaVell eating lunch and in walk Corrine Tedros and LaVell get all agitated and call out her name, only he don’t call her Corrine, he keep saying April Rayne instead.”

“You sure about this?”

Leon nodded. “My cousin say Corrine Tedros say Wayne LaVell mistaking her for someone else, but LaVell don’t stop calling her that name until the lawyer guy Raychard Balen that LaVell eating with call him down. Mean time, Corrine Tedros looking scared, like a big dog chasing after her.”

“Ok,” Ben said. “One other thing, Leon. You have any relatives out of town?”

“I got an auntie in Raleigh.”

“Good. I think it might be time to pay her a visit.

After signing out, Ben stopped by the hospital to check on Ginger Talbert. Her condition was stable, but she wasn’t seeing visitors. A nurse told him that it was too soon to tell about the extent of the damage on the facial lacerations.

The waiting room on Talbert’s floor was empty. Ben ducked in. He put in a call to his old partner, Andy Calucci.

“A favor,” Ben said. “Your buddy Joey Romatta is still working Phoenix PD, right?”

Andy Calucci said he was.

“A favor,” Ben repeated.

“Who and why?” Calucci asked.

Ben explained what he needed.

“Oh man,” Calucci said. “You got any idea where this is headed?”

“Just a hunch,” Ben said. “Nothing more.”

After leaving the hospital, Ben doubled back to Queensland Highway, following it west and skirting the edge of the old downtown district. The radio was full of old love songs and used car commercials. He cut south and passed the site for the new high school, stopping three blocks later for the light where two men in black suits were working the traffic, each proffering a wicker basket and asking for an End Times offering. On the other side of the intersection, Reverend Redd Benton had set up a large tan revival tent. A streetside sign proclaimed: EXPOSURE TO THE SON WILL PREVENT BURNING.

Ben took Old Market Boulevard and continued south toward the regional airport, moving through a long cluttered stretch of fast food restaurants, motels, and small businesses. He passed the exit for the new mall and cut east again and drove through a large residential area comprised primarily of clusters of small subdivisions until he found the entrance to Delmar Woods.

As far as subdivisions went, Delmar Woods was your basic lock-and-load ranch houses and its layout an exercise in repetition and variation. All the streets were named after trees. He parked in front of 1228 Chestnut Lane.

Carl Adkin’s place was not out of range of a patrolman’s salary, but there was a lot of conspicuous icing.

A generous lot, the lawn wide and at least three shades deeper than any of the surrounding ones, the grass thick and putting-green quality, the surrounding landscape a carefully choreographed sequence of mimosa and crepe myrtle and palmetto, beds of verbena and marigolds and petunias, and borders of rhododendron and azalea and gardenia, all of them lush and thriving as if they’d cut a deal with the drought conditions that were leaning on everyone else.

There was a new black Dodge pickup maxed out on detail work parked in front of the two-car garage, the rear end of a late-model SUV framed in the opposite bay. Next to the garage were a john-boat, two jet skis, and a Bayliner speedboat setting on a trailer.

Ben was almost to the front door when he heard voices out back.

Carl Adkin was on a pine deck that opened on two sliding glass doors at the rear of the house. He stood, wreathed in smoke, over a black barbecue grill. He glanced down at Ben.

“How’s foot patrol? Heard Talbert kissed the glass,” he said. “Tough break. She never was one you’d want as primary on the scene. She’s nervous, and it shows.”

Ben walked up three steps to the deck. In the middle of the backyard was a large pecan tree. Two women, one blonde, the other red-haired, sat in webbed lawn chairs at the edge of its shade. There was a white Styrofoam cooler between them. The red-haired woman held and tried to quiet a persistently crying infant. The blonde watched two boys chase each other on ATVs around the yard.

Carl Adkin looked at Ben and then went back to flipping burgers that were the size of flattened softballs. “Angus,” he said. “Prime cut.” He smiled and slapped a belly softening at the waistline of his jeans.

“You could say that about a lot of the things around here.” Ben nodded toward the buzzing ATVs, the kennel and enclosed runway along the property line, the wired workshop, and elaborate swing set and two-story wooden fort tucked into the southeast corner of the yard.

“I like nice things,” Carl Adkin said.

“Last time I heard,” Ben said, “nice things cost money.” He paused and scanned the backyard again. The red-haired woman juggled the baby and lifted the lid of the cooler and pulled out a beer. The baby moved from crying to wailing.

“It stands to reason,” Ben said, “a lot of nice things must cost a lot of money.”

“I’m waiting to hear why any of that is your goddamn business.” Adkin went from burger to burger, cutting into each with the edge of the spatula. The insides were pink and wet.

A moment later, a line of pit bulls appeared in the enclosed wire runway of the kennel and began barking and throwing themselves against the fence.

“Meat in the air,” Carl Adkin said. “You’re hungry, you can’t help but smell it.”

“I want you to lose the paper on Leon Douglas,” Ben said.

“I don’t think so,” Adkin said. “We go back, Leon and me. A little history there. He’s got an attitude.”

“Eye and Ear,” Ben said. “He’s helping me.”

“Your problem, right there,” Adkin said. “Trusting that little coon to bring you anything that holds water.”

There was movement behind the sliding glass doors. A small girl walked into the living room with a juice box and climbed up on the couch. From where he stood, Ben could hear faint strains of cartoon mayhem.

“I need you to lose the paper,” he repeated.

Adkin put the face of the spatula on the burgers and pressed them against the grill top. The meat popped and sizzled. “Give me one good reason for why I should lose the paper on our friend Leon.”

“Because I’ll scare up a couple of Leon’s friends and get them to testify they were on the scene and witnessed you using unnecessary force in the arrest.” Ben paused and took a step closer to Adkin. “They’ll perjure themselves from here to Sunday, and with the newspaper and television play, the chief and mayor will push for an investigation, and we’ll see how that resisting charge you slapped on Leon holds up.”

Adkin pointed the spatula at Ben. “You’re making a mistake here.”

“The paper,” Ben said. “It’s gone. You can go in or call it in. I don’t care as long as it’s today.”

In the backyard, the red-haired woman handed the crying infant to the blonde and then rummaged in the cooler. The boys on the ATVs chased down a cat that had wandered in from next door. Adkin nodded, but didn’t look at Ben. He kept his gaze on his property line and on the wide evening sky simmering in the remains of the day’s heat.

NEAR DUSK, and Croy Wendall crouched along the Two Bridge River and watched what was left of the sun sheet the surface of the water in a thin pale yellow. He waited for a wrinkle in the light that signaled movement or looked for the small knob of a head breaking the surface. The rain had gone missing for a long time, and the waterline was low, and Croy could smell mud slowly drying out in layers.

His hand shot out. He added the frog to the others in the burlap bag he’d set on the bank. Then he dipped the bag in the water, and when he pulled it out again, its bottom portion was all jump and squirm.

Croy thought about nerves firing along a spine. He’d seen a television show about that once. A cut-away of a human’s insides with small fiery red dots pulsing where the nerves were.

Croy’s hand shot out again. He kept adding frogs to the bag until the light had melted into the water, and then he took the bag and climbed the bank and walked back to the cabin.

The cabin was above the river on a small flat-topped rise, and it was ringed on three sides by live oaks. On the other side of the trees the ground ran into an immense swampy field bordered on the west by woods, which was where Croy had hidden his car.

Croy filled the portable generator with gas and started it up and watched the lights flicker on inside the windows. He put the sack of frogs in an old galvanized washtub that held the other bag of frogs he’d caught yesterday.

He stood at the door for a moment and looked at the tree directly behind the cabin. The tree had worked its way into his dreams. At some point it had been struck by lightning, and its trunk carried a long jagged break. The limbs on the north side were bare, but the other side was still green with new leaves the size of fingers.

Croy went into the cabin and made supper. He chewed on the right side of his mouth because the left side hurt from a missing filling in a back molar. The gumline around the tooth was swollen and tender, and a sweet taste leaked from the tooth and mixed with the taste of the food.

After supper, Croy put three aspirin directly on the molar and chewed them to paste.

Then he checked his belt to make sure the cell phone was clipped to it and charged. Mr. Balen had told Croy to carry the cell phone with him everywhere, and Croy did.

At first, Croy had been afraid Mr. Balen was going to be mad at him for shooting Jamie and Missy and for running away after burning down the house and then almost getting caught by that policewoman and having to throw her through the restaurant window, but Croy had explained about Jamie having stolen all of Croy’s savings and about Jamie getting ready to turn Croy in for killing Stanley Tedros and getting the reward.

Mr. Balen didn’t yell at Croy though. He was very nice. He talked to Croy in a voice that sounded like it was on a commercial for things that people would find handy to use around the house, and then he drove Croy to the cabin, and together they took apart the gun Croy had taken from the policewoman and threw the pieces in the river, and Mr. Balen gave him a new gun. Later he brought Croy all the supplies and snacks he needed to stay there.

Croy had promised to stay close to the cabin and not go anywhere else.

After he’d moved into the cabin, Croy had some bad dreams, but he didn’t watch them long. Even asleep, he could stop one dream and start another. It was like changing channels on television. He’d been able to do that ever since he was five years old.

Sometimes at night, he listened to the frogs.

Sometimes, he said rhymes or numbers in his head.

He found a picture in one of the magazines left in the cabin that he liked, and he carefully tore it out and put it on the wall next to his cot. It was an advertisement for juice, and there was no writing on it at all, just a perfectly round orange set in the center of the page against a bright white background. Looking at it made him feel the same way as listening to the frogs did. Croy also liked the word itself.
Orange.
It was everyday and mysterious at the same time, the name of the thing indistinguishable from the color describing it, a perfect seamless fit.

Croy didn’t exactly remember when he started dreaming about the tree.

He was pretty sure it was right after he tried to fix Stanley Tedros’s pocketwatch.

No matter how many times Croy wound it, the watch kept losing time. Only a couple minutes at first, but then the hours started piling up, and Croy got very nervous in his stomach, and he finally pried the face of the watch off with a kitchen knife, but that made him even more nervous because the sight of the watch’s insides, all those tiny gears and wheels and how they fit and worked somehow got mixed up in his head with the times Jamie and Missy had sexed each other while Croy was in the house and the walls would hold all the noises they made, and Croy couldn’t make the nerves firing inside him slow down until he took the watch and buried it outside and then went down to the river to catch some frogs for a while.