Little Girls Lost (25 page)

Harry Nautilus sat in bed wearing red and black silk pajamas patterned with winged Oriental dragons breathing fire. They were Nautilus’s favorite pajamas, his
lucky
PJs. He heard a car pull into the drive and rearranged the covers over his legs.

Downstairs the front door opened.

Nautilus pulled the rolling bedside table close, covering his lap like a desk. He shot a glance at the closed closet door. Studied the new additions to his wall. Pulled on reading glasses.

Whispered, “Go time.”

Slow and heavy footsteps ascended the stairs. Ainsley Duckworth appeared in the hall outside Harry Nautilus’s bedroom door. Nautilus was writing in a notepad, concentrating on the writing, like nothing else mattered.

“Captain Bidwell said you needed to talk to me, Nautilus. To meet you up here. What the hell you need at five thirty a.m? You’re trying to talk me
out of pressing assault charges against Ryder, right? Ain’t gonna happen.”

Nautilus kept his eyes to the writing pad.

“Nautilus?”

Harry Nautilus looked up, showing neither surprise or expectation. He laid down his pen. Took off his reading glasses, folded them, set them beside the pen.

“Step into the room, Ducks.”

Duckworth entered and his mouth dropped. Paper was everywhere, surfaces piled high with files, pages strewn across the floor like autumn leaves. A card table in the corner held wigs, clothing, a purse, broken-off fingernails, eyeglasses, a rhinestoned high heel shoe—dozens of pieces of physical evidence from the murdered red-haired women and their crime scenes.

Nautilus watched Duckworth’s eyes move from the evidence table to the far wall, completely covered with photographs relating to the crimes, a mural of suffering and death. There were photos from the crime scenes, from the morgue, from the autopsies. The largest photos, blown up to poster size, were of the women themselves—Sally Harkness, Tami Zelinger, Jiliana Simpkins—broken faced and sprawled across the ground.

Duckworth’s confused eyes turned to Harry Nautilus.

Nautilus said, “I got bored, Ducks.”

“What are you talking about?” Duckworth
whispered, shooting glances around the room. His eyes kept returning to the wall of photos.

“Six weeks back I got bored laying here. So I asked Tom Mason to send over the cold case files he’d left on my desk before I got knocked. For a month and a half I’ve lived with these girls, studied their cases. Every detail of their lives. Every detail of the crime scenes. Every detail of evidence. I’ve sent pieces to the local lab, the FBI lab, specialty labs.”

“What did you find out?” Duckworth’s voice was flat and dry.

“Things, Ducks. Sad things.”

Harry Nautilus put the reading glasses back on his face. He picked up his pen and resumed writing on the notepad, as if Duckworth were inconsequential, already consigned to spending the rest of his life in a cell.

Duckworth said, “Why was I supposed to come here?”

Nautilus kept writing, didn’t miss a beat.

“I wanted to see what you looked like walking in from the front instead of sneaking up from behind.”

Ainsley Duckworth blinked his eyes as if Nautilus was moving in and out of focus. He turned for the door, leaving. Paused.

“They’re waiting for me out there, aren’t they?”

“Yep.”

A long pause, the only sound the scratching of Harry Nautilus’s pen. Duckworth couldn’t see that Nautilus was writing gibberish.

Duckworth said, “It was that fucking Squill, you know. The bastard ruined my life.”

Nautilus kept writing, his concentration on the notepad.

“Goddamn it!” Duckworth yelled. “Stop writing and listen to me.”

Nautilus sighed. He slipped off the reading glasses. Set the pen across the pad.

“I married a worthless bitch, Nautilus,” Duckworth said. “Patty was her name,
its
name. Lazy as a goddamn slug. Couldn’t cook for shit. Ironed as good as a quadriplegic. She either dressed like a filthy whore or someone’s grandmamma, couldn’t get anything right. You’ve been around, Nautilus. You know how women need the control of a strong man. Without it they fall apart, nothing gets done.”

Nautilus looked toward the window. The sun was rising behind the trees and the glass was orange as flame. He turned to Duckworth.

“You occasionally had to discipline your wife? That what you’re telling me, Ducks?”

“Sometimes things got loud, nosy do-good neighbors called it in. There were cruiser runs to my house a few times. But things were cool, y’know. I’d make promises to Squill and the boys, they’d chill.”

“The boys,” Nautilus echoed.

“One day I found the bitch secretly transferring money from my account, getting set up to leave, like she thought she could make it
without me. I had to really set the bitch straight. Maybe I got a little excited. There was some stuff with her teeth, ribs. The slut’s gall bladder had to be pulled out.”

“What about the boys, Ducks?”

“Fucking Squill shows up at the hospital, tells me I was the best right-hand man he’d ever had. How much he needs me in Internal Affairs, keeping him tuned in to little opportunities, ways to move up, situations to exploit.”

“But you were in trouble, right, Ducks?”

Duckworth waved the words away like a meddlesome fly. “Goddamn Patty was whining about going to the papers, making a huge stink. I told Squill she always said that stuff and I always kept her in line.”

“But Squill couldn’t take the risk.”

“Fucking Squill says that, to keep my job and pension, I’ve got to shut her up…give her what she wanted: Divorce, house, savings, and three hundred bucks every paycheck for ten years. She sold the house, took off with everything. I’m still paying a blind account with money for that Irish bitch.”

Nautilus added up what he’d heard. He went out on a limb. He figured it would hold.

“Patty was a redhead, Ducks. Right?”

“Hair like a goddamn fire truck.”

Nautilus said, “And you got back at her, didn’t you, Ducks? In your own way.”

Duckworth smiled. His shoulders relaxed and
he faced his smile to the wall holding the photos of the dead prostitutes.

“In my own way.”

Nautilus slid his right hand beneath the table. Closed it around the blanket-covered pistol in his lap.

“You couldn’t vent any more rage on Patty. Hurt her, kill her, and you’d be suspect numero uno. But working over a stand-in, a proxy? Felt good, didn’t it, Ducky? Cleaned the anger out. For a while, at least.”

Duckworth jammed his fists into his sacrum and arched backward, clicking kinks from his spine.

“After doing whore number one, I relaxed for the first time in months. Sure, I knew the red-headed little street whore wasn’t Patty. But for some long and tasty minutes, she was. It felt so good I did the other two. And a couple more in Florida when it got hot around here. But you know most of this, right, Nautilus?”

Nautilus nodded at the files and photos like he’d seen them a thousand times. “You left some loose ends, Ducks, missed a couple details.”

Duckworth walked to the window, put his hands on the frame, looked out. He seemed pleased with the day. “I should have given you another pop in the head, Nautilus. I screwed up.” His turned, his smile widening into a grin. “I did better with Sandhill.”

Nautilus said, “Tell me.”

Duckworth sat on the window frame and drummed his hands on his knees.

“Sandhill started looking into the cases. I figured he’d find something to front-burner them, a hair, a print. I remembered the property room shut down for fumigating twice a year, cameras shut off. On fume day I snatched the key from Chief Squill’s desk. I was a hell of a lot better at taking evidence than Sandhill was.”

“Where is Sandhill, Ducks?”

Duckworth winked. “About to follow the sweet little ladies.”

“What ladies?”

Duckworth chuckled. His hand moved upward, nearing the shoulder-holstered weapon beneath his jacket.

“Freeze!” Nautilus yelled. He pulled his gun from beneath the table as Ryder emerged from the closet, his own weapon zeroed on Duckworth.

Duckworth’s hand paused, his grin so wide it owned his face. He slowly brought his hand to his lips and kissed his fingertips. He blew the kiss at the photos on the wall.

Then bent his knees and launched backwards through the glass.

Ryder got to the window a half second before Nautilus. They stared at Duckworth’s body on the drive, his neck at an impossible angle and a kiss still perched on his lips. Bidwell and the cops who’d been hiding in the garage ran to Duckworth,
horrified faces looking between the body and the window.

“Sandhill?” Ryder whispered.

“He’s on his own,” Nautilus said.

Sandhill stood on the walkway outside the bridge as the blazing sun rose from a waking sea, the layered cirrus like contrails of fire. The breeze sang through the antennae atop the bridge. To the stern, the lights of Mobile had vanished beneath the horizon like expended candles.

A formally attired Mattoon appeared at Sandhill’s side. He set his suited elbows against the railing and leaned forward, as relaxed as a man on a 1930s Cunard liner. Far below, the green water churned and foamed.

“You’re looking well, Mr Sandhill.”

Sandhill held up his arm, the floppy cuffs reaching to his knuckles. “Guess I’m looking as well as can be expected. I take it there weren’t a lot of fashions to choose from?”

Atwan jabbed Sandhill with the gun. “Hands at side. Keep there.”

Sandhill flicked his head at his guard. “Is this guy going to wave that piece during the
ceremony? I can’t think of a better way to scare my daughter.”

Mattoon turned to Atwan. “I see nothing wrong with keeping the weapon beneath your jacket, Tenzel. We don’t want my beloved to remember this occasion with anything but unblemished joy.”

Atwan grunted and reluctantly jammed the pistol into his waistband, pulling the dark blazer tight to cover it. A small brown man in a white uniform appeared as if summoned by telepathy. He bowed slightly.

“All is in readiness, Mr Mattoon.”

“Thank you, Mr Ghobali. Come inside, Mr Sandhill, Tenzel.”

Sandhill fell in behind Mattoon, entering the bridge. A garden of floral arrangements was set amidst gauges and instruments and electronic screens. Lilacs and carnations interlaced through conduits overhead. A brilliant white carpet ran from a closed door at the back of the bridge to the center of the room. Mattoon reached to a microphone on the wall, keyed it. Sandhill heard the words booming outside, the public-address system echoing across the ship.

“Good morning. This is Mr Mattoon addressing you from the bridge. A very special event is about to occur, a ceremony of joy. Crews currently at the stations will remain so. Those not working are invited to the mess for champagne and hors d’oeuvres, working crews may partake at shift’s end.
Thank you, gentlemen. I ask your good wishes extend to my life’s new companion…” he paused, and his words gained the smallest inflection of command. “…as I know they will.” Mattoon hung up the mike and positioned himself at the carpet’s terminus, gesturing Sandhill beside him.

“Remember your vow,” he whispered. “Bless this union and you will leave life quietly and with dignity. Anything else, and your screams will make a Torquemada faint.”

Sandhill nodded, flexed his fingers, tapped them against his legs, and waited.

Sampanong entered the room from the side, dressed in full regalia and holding a bible. He positioned himself beside Mattoon.

The opening strains of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony began playing from the speakers in the overhead. Sandhill heard a moan seep from Mattoon as he stared at the closed door across the room.

“…seven, eight…”

I was scared. The man named Oh Golly had told me to wait for the music, count to ten, open the door and walk across a rug to the people at the other end.

“…nine, ten…”

I could feel my heart when I opened the door. I could feel something else, too. Something felt funny under my dress.

I stepped onto a rug as white as snow. The
room was gray and metal, with windows. At the far end of the room was my daddy, the Gumbo King. Beside him was a man with pointy hair and a face that looked made of rocks. He had on a black suit with a white flower on it. The scary bald man was by the pointy haired man. The man named Oh Golly was there, and a man in captain hat.

I took some steps. It hurt to walk. The man with the pointy hair was staring at me. His teeth looked like a smile but different somehow. It made my feet stop.

My toes felt wet.

I looked at my daddy and he nodded, like I was to come closer. He was going to lift me in the air like giving me away. He told me don’t be scared when he did it.

I started to walk again. Someone whispered the word
Blood.
It was Oh Golly.

I kept walking.

Oh Golly ran over and looked down behind me. I looked and saw red dots on the rug. Then the pointy haired man ran over and looked down. He yanked up my dress to my knees and blood was running down from above.

The man screamed, “WHO DID THIS!”

The scary man ran over and bent down low to look. I saw my daddy move real fast and his foot kicked the scary man’s face. Blood flew in the air. He fell on the rug. My daddy grabbed the pointy haired man and pulled him back hard,
so his head hit the metal wall and bounced like a ball.

“Knife, Jacy. Knife!”

Back in the metal box my daddy had taped a knife on the leg by my panties. He said to be real careful so the point didn’t stab me, but it poked me when I was stamping my foot to get the awful man from the bathroom so he wouldn’t see it.

“Knife, Jacy!” Daddy’s hand was grabbing by my face.

I pulled up my dress and peeled the knife off and gave to his hand. Oh Golly and the man in the captain hat looked real scared and ran out the door. When I looked back my daddy was grabbing the pointy haired man from behind and holding the knife at his neck. His face was purple and he grabbed at my daddy’s arm.

“All we want is off, Mattoon,” my daddy was saying. “You can be gone and free forever. Or you can die today.”

“Yes, of course,” the man was saying. “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.”

“Have your crew lower motorized lifeboats, Mattoon. Order them to stay back, no weapons. You’re coming with us. When we get sufficient distance, we’ll put you in a boat, you can come back to this floating perversion. Do you understand me?”

The knife in my daddy’s hand was digging into the man neck. It was bleeding.

“Yes, of course. Please. You’re hurting me. Please.”

“All right, Mattoon, in a minute we’re gonna samba outside and you’ll start giving orders.”

“Yes. Whatever you say.”

“First we’re gonna sashay over to your buddy on the floor and get his gun. I need a decent weapon. Jacy!”

“What?”

“Stand over by the table until we get outside. I’ll call, you come out, right?”

“Yes sir.”

My daddy moved the man toward the scary bald man on the floor. They were almost there when something bad happened. The vase on the table by my head exploded. Pieces flew everywhere.

I looked and saw the scary man still on the floor but pointing a big black gun at me. I could look into its eye.

I heard my daddy whisper a bad word.

The scary man stood up and made his hand get tight on the gun. My daddy closed his eyes. I saw his arm get looser on the pointy haired man’s neck.

“Gutshoot Sandhill, Tenzel,” the man started yelling. “Gutshoot the bastard.”

The scary man moved the gun toward the Gumbo King. I saw the scary man smile and lick his tongue across his lips like a lizard.

I heard a strange sound.