Little Girls Lost (4 page)

The head was wrapped in white from crown to above the eyebrows, resembling a mummy in progress. An IV-tubed hand emerged from beneath a thin blanket, reached to the head, and pushed at the heavy swathing. The hand clenched in frustration, then opened toward Ryder, fingers flicking the
gimme
motion.

“Hand me that fork, Carson.”

“I just see a spoon.”

“Gimme that, then.”

Ryder slapped a teaspoon into the outstretched palm as if he were handing a surgeon a scalpel. The hand jammed the spoon beneath the edge of the bandages and stirred from side to side.

“Oh lawd, the motion is the potion. Nothing worse than an itch you can’t scratch.”

Harry Nautilus handed the spoon back to Ryder. “I’ll be damn glad when they unwrap this cock-eyed turban.” His voice was a thin rasp. “It’s hair growing back that causes the damn itching.”

“How long you gonna be gone, brother?” Ryder asked.

Nautilus rolled his eyes. “Answer’s the same as last time, Carson. The docs got me barred from any sort of duty for at least two more months.”

The room smelled of inactivity and disinfectant. There were various medications on the bedside table. Nautilus wore scarlet pajamas with outsize paisley swirls. Three months ago, before the attack, he weighed two hundred and forty pounds. He was now a hundred and ninety, the bones of his square face sharp and prominent. Even the brushy hyphen of his mustache looked emaciated.

“How about your memory, Harry? Anything new there?”

Nautilus held his hands in the air, balling them into fists and flicking them open. He repeated the action several times.

“Are you supposed to exercise your hands?” Ryder asked, perplexed. “Does it help something?”

“I’m counting all the times you asked that question. If I remember anything, you’ll damn well be the first to hear.”

Ryder knew his partner was angry at more than the memory loss. It rankled to have been blindsided. Nautilus had been walking in his neighborhood at ten at night when someone had crept up from behind and slammed his head with a pipe or other blunt instrument. His wallet had been taken, along with his watch. Only a dog walker coming by minutes later prevented Harry Nautilus from
succumbing to a hemorrhage in his brain. He remembered nothing of the incident. It was black coated with black and buried in a pile of shadows.

“Try, Harry.”

“There’s nothing else there yet, Carson,” Nautilus rumbled. “I remember going out for a walk. The next thing I remember is waking up with half a hospital hooked to me, plus your ugly face beside the bed.”

Nautilus’s aunt, Sophie Hopewright, bustled through the door. Fifty-eight and more administrator than nurse these days, she managed a hospital’s nurse-training program. But the moment she’d heard of her nephew’s injury, she’d turned a room in her home into a convalescent center, overseeing Nautilus’s recovery with the demeanor of a dyspeptic drill sergeant. Ryder thought of her as Attila the Nurse.

“Move your skinny butt to the side, Ryder,” she commanded, brandishing a thermometer in his face. He retreated to a corner and watched the tall woman with short, steel-gray hair dispatch her tasks.

“Don’t you tire him out,” she admonished, a scowl promising dire retribution if he disobeyed.

“Fifteen minutes, max, Soph,” Ryder pledged, hand in the air.

“Five,” she said, no room for a counter-offer.

Ryder hugged the wall to keep from getting sucked into the woman’s slipstream as she thundered from the room. He edged back to bedside.

“Months until you come back to the department, Harry? What if you do real good, ace all your tests or whatever? Could you come back sooner?”

Nautilus sighed. “We can talk about that later. Fill me in on the latest at work.”

“You saw the news about this morning’s fire, the young girl’s body?”

“I figured it was your vic.”

“The black community thinks we’re sitting on our thumbs. There’s nothing to go on so far. Forensics is combing the ashes, but…”

“Something’ll break, Carson. Most of Investigative’s working the case, right?”

“There’s no focus, just Squill’s endless run-in-circles meetings.”

Nautilus nodded. “With Squill giving orders but keeping a delegator’s distance, I’ll bet.”

“Squill’s letting Duckworth make command decisions,” Ryder moaned. “It’s insane.”

“It’s completely logical,” Nautilus corrected. “Duckworth’s as driven and amoral as Squill, but content to whisper in Caesar’s ear, not be Caesar.”

Ryder paused. “All this time, before you’re allowed back…” His voice rose with hope. “You’re sure that’s set in stone?”

Nautilus didn’t seem to hear. He reached for a plastic cup of melting ice, sipped noisily through a bent straw, set the cup down.

“Hey, Carson, you ever dig into that stack of cold cases Tom laid on my desk a few days before I got jumped?”

Changing the subject, Ryder noted. It was hardly likely Harry had given the cases a moment’s thought. The unit’s overseer, Lieutenant Tom Mason, routinely handed out unsolved cases to the detective teams, hoping fresh eyes might find something.

“Are you kidding, Harry? When you got bonked, I sent the cases back to Property. I never had the time to even open the files.”

Ryder looked out the window. The Fairhope water tower loomed in the dark sky, feeding water to the town like a floating metal heart. Ryder watched red lights pulse on the tower before turning back to his partner.

“A strange thing happened at a meeting today, Harry. Mayor Philips came by. She wanted to know if there were any retired or inactive dicks that might help work the cases, shed some light.”

Nautilus nodded. “She’s got to be feeling heat, especially from the black community. Nothing strange about that.”

“Here’s where the weird comes in. Zemain mentioned Conner Sandhill. I vaguely remember him, big guy, kept to himself. He left the force a little after I made detective. Odd guy, from what little I recall. No one seemed to talk about Sandhill after that. You never have.”

Nautilus grunted.

“What?” Ryder asked.

“Nothing. Keep going.”

“I remember Sandhill working sex crimes and
cold cases. Then he just disappeared. When Zemain floated Sandhill’s name, Squill sank it with cannon fire. I hear he runs that restaurant on Parlor Street. The one you never want to go to, right?”

Nautilus looked away to refill his drinking glass. “I got other places I like better.”

“What happened with Sandhill, Harry?”

“I don’t like talking from rumors. Things get scrambled.”

“What kind of ru—”

Sophie stampeded through the door, tapping her watch crystal with a fingernail. “That’s it. Time’s up, Ryder. You take your ten o’clock meds, Harry?”

“Uh…”

“I knew it. Get them pills in your mouth before I do. You keep forgetting and I’ll have the pharmacist mix ‘em in suppository form. Then I’m gonna buy me a hammer. Get my drift, Harry Nautilus?”

Ryder winced and tiptoed from the room.

Heading back across the bay, Ryder was troubled that his partner didn’t want to discuss when he’d return to work, immediately changing the subject. The avoidance was puzzling. He was on the causeway when a thought hit him so hard it kicked the breath from his lungs and he had to pull off the road
.

Heart pounding in his chest, Ryder did the math…

Harry was forty-six years old. He joined the force when he was twenty-two. Twenty-four years
in, and the sick time kicked it right up to a fullpension twenty-five.

Harry Nautilus didn’t need to come back. He could retire with full benefits if he wished.

Ryder closed his eyes and listened to breaking waves until his lost breath returned. He drove home slowly, crossing the bridge to Dauphin Island near midnight. Entering his stilt-standing beachfront home, he noted a single call on his answering machine, the screen blinking the number of Harry’s cellphone.

Ryder stood in the dark and punched play. The voice of Harry Nautilus filled the room.

“Carson, no one would be better for taking a look at the abduction cases than Sandhill…”

A long empty hiss followed, like his partner had something he needed to add. Ryder pictured Harry Nautilus in his bed, phone in hand, frowning, trying to give Ryder some form of explanation, or enlightenment. Anything beyond sixteen words.

Nothing seemed to come. Nautilus hung up.

At ten a.m. Sandhill finished wiping the last letter of his neon sign, the G in king. He tucked the rag in the back pocket of his jeans and debated turning the sign on. Though the restaurant was an hour from opening, Sandhill loved the sizzle and crackle as his sign flickered into life.

After Hurricane Katrina destroyed the New Orleans restaurant where he’d been the head chef, Sandhill tried a couple other places as an assistant, didn’t like perverting his craft—
powdered garlic? Factory-made andouille? Blasphemy!
—and a year back had returned to Mobile, toying with the thought of opening his own restaurant. Ninetynine per cent of him dismissed the idea as pure lunacy. One morning, however, while the rational ninety-nine per cent was still in bed, a subversive one per cent smuggled him to the sign shop to put a hefty down payment on the creation of a neonred
THE GUMBO KING
, a bright yellow crown flashing at a rakish angle above the cursive letters.

Thus invested in a magnificent work of signage, he’d felt logically compelled to follow through, and eleven weeks later the doors of the restaurant opened.

Sandhill heard a knock at the locked door. He opened it, ready to recite the hours, when Nike Charlane walked wordlessly past, swung a crocheted purse the size of a grocery bag on to the nearest table, and sat. She wore impenetrably dark sunglasses, a blue ball cap, and a white tee with the logo of the Mobile Art Museum and Exploreum. Paint-speckled canvas pants fell to outsized flip-flops. Sandhill sat and stared into the void of her Ray-Bans.

Nike took a deep breath. “Listen, Conner, about the other night in the alley, I wanted to say—”

“Wait,” Sandhill said. He reached across the table and gently removed Nike’s sunglasses. Her outsized eyes were laced with red.

“Aha, there you are.”

She blinked. “I wanted to say thanks for the other night.”

“It was no problem.”

“Uh, Conner, I’m a little fuzzy on details, but you had a gun to that boy’s head. You wouldn’t have—”

“An act. At least with that damned misaligned kid. I would have enjoyed shooting the other one.”

“I was afraid you were going to when he pulled the knife.”

“If the kick had missed, it was my next choice. I preferred avoiding that route, thus avoiding unnecessary contact with the constabulary.
There’s some of them don’t love me, strange as it seems.”

Nike shook her head. “I shouldn’t have gone down the alley.”

“You weren’t thinking straight.”

“I’m better now.”

“For how long?”

She started to speak, then stood and swept her purse from the table. “Thanks again. I have to go.”

“Stay for coffee.”

“I don’t need lectures, Conner.”

“Bad things are happening, Nike. You’ve got to keep that little girl safe. Jacy’s not safe when you’re on a binge.”

She stared through him. But, at the corners of her eyes, he saw fear.

“You’re making more out of it than it is, Conner. Most of the time I’m fine.”

“That’s denial. Most of the time won’t cut it. Try all of the time.”

Nike feigned a look at her watch. “Aren’t you late for your self-righteousness class? I’d hate for them to start without you; they’d miss so much.” She slung the purse over her shoulder and started away.

“Nike.”

She closed her eyes, sucked in a breath and turned. “I’ve got things to do, Conner. What is it?”

“How’s your painting going?”

The anger in her face softened. “It’s…good. Thanks for asking.”

Sandhill smiled. “That’s great to hear. How about the next time you go off on a toot you paint a target on Jacy’s back? Maybe a few words under it, something like, ‘Come and get me.’”

Nike’s eyes widened until there seemed no more face for them, and she walked away on legs as stiff as posts.

Ryder was at his desk, rethinking his time with Harry Nautilus and wondering if anything else could go wrong in his life. The phone rang. It was Commander Ainsley Duckworth, Squill’s majordomo.

“Hey, Ryder, the chief needs to see you.”

Acting
chief, Ryder thought, hearing Mayor Philips in his head. “What’s he want, Ducks?”

“The name’s Duckworth, Ryder.
Commander
Duckworth to you. Here’s your first command of the day: How about you hustle your worthless ass over here, pronto. The chief’s got a chore for you.”

Ryder drove by the restaurant three times before parking, like if he kept circling the block, the restaurant might disappear. When it didn’t, he parked in front of a neon window sign screaming
THE GUMBO KING
.

He stood on the sidewalk, lifted his sunglasses, and studied the neighborhood. A half mile from the heart of the city, it was working class, more black than white, sixty-forty maybe. This particular block was zoned for business: restaurant, dry cleaner, beauty parlor, a storefront grocery with a table of fresh fruit and vegetables displayed outside the door. A small park occupied half of the next block, green space reclaimed after a warehouse had burned to the ground. It had been then-councilwoman Norma Philips who’d spearheaded the project, Ryder recalled.

He dropped the shades in his pocket, turned to the restaurant, and went inside.

Ryder was surprised at how neat the place was, light and airy, with glittering strands of Mardi Gras
beads strung from pine walls polished to a buttery glow. Here and there hung festival masks either frightening or comical. The air was perfumed with thyme and garlic and cayenne. Clifton Chenier played the “Zydeco Cha Cha” over the sound system. There were no customers, but it was just past eleven a.m., the place open maybe five minutes.

Before he’d even pulled out his chair, a bigbosomed black woman with an electric smile banged through the doors from the kitchen, a pot of coffee in one hand, white ceramic mug in the other.

“You look like a man needin’ caffeine,” she said, filling the mug and setting it on the table.

“Actually, I need to see Conner Sandhill.”

The woman’s smile flattened into tight-eyed scrutiny. Her toe tapped the floor.

“You’re a cop, right?”

“I’ve been getting conflicting opinions. But I think so.”

The waitress returned to the kitchen. Ryder heard a female whisper followed by a deep male groan. Sandhill arrived a minute later. He was a big, barrel-chested guy wearing a felt crown and a vest fronted with purple sequins. Sequins were missing and the blank areas had been filled in with purple dots of paint. Sandhill sat—nimbly for such a moose, Ryder noted, feeling Sandhill give him the once-over with large eyes, his bushy mustache twitching as if he were checking Ryder’s scent.

“I remember seeing you a time or two, Ryder. Years ago. You go after the psychos these days,
right? Is that why you’re here? Has someone reported me as psychotic?”

“I was ordered here by the acting chief of police, Mr Sandhill. He wanted me to talk to you.”

Sandhill slammed his fist on the table.

“CORNBREAD!”

The waitress pushed through the kitchen doors seconds later. She slid a plate on to the table, four steaming squares of cornbread, butter and honey to the side.

“I’m not hungry,” Ryder said, not wanting to break bread with the guy.

“I’d advise it,” Sandhill said. “Stress has put you off your feed lately, right, Detective? People getting on you about losing weight?”

Ryder stared, nonplussed. A half dozen people, Nautilus included, had asked if he was on a diet. Just yesterday Clair Peltier had given him her third Your-Body-Needs-Sleep-and-Fuel lecture in two weeks.

“Uh, how did you know that?”

Sandhill nodded at Ryder’s waist. “Your belt’s buckled to a new hole. More tongue’s showing on the far side.”

Ryder had pulled the belt two notches tighter the preceding week. He looked down and saw the old indentation in the leather from years in the same position. The leather beside the current hole was unmarred. One glance and Sandhill had scoped it out and added it up.

Jesus,
Ryder thought.

“Eat,” Sandhill said.

Driven by the glorious aroma, Ryder couldn’t help himself, wolfing down two pieces of the yellow manna.

“Now that you’ve had a bit of a repast,” Sandhill said, buttering his own piece of cornbread, “might I ask what the ever-talented Terrence Squill wants of me?”

“We’ve got a problem, Mr Sandhill.” Ryder dabbed crumbs from his mouth with a napkin. “The missing girls. Nothing’s coming together. We need fresh eyes. Plus we found one of the abducted girls, LaShelle Shearing. Dead.”

“The body in the fire.” Sandhill nodded. “You guys aren’t doing real good, PR-wise.”

“A girl abducted a year ago, then two girls taken in under two weeks. No evidence, nothing. No one’s seen anything, heard anything.”

Sandhill pushed the platter to Ryder. One square of cornbread left. Ryder grabbed it.

“Who’s leading the investigations?” Sandhill asked.

“I did at first, by default. Like you noted, I’m a member of the PSIT, which stands for—”

“The Psychopathological and Sociopathological Investigative Team,” Sandhill completed, staring Ryder in the eye. “You and Harry Nautilus. For two guys, you’ve had big results. The morgue killer, the serial-killer-memorabilia freaks, the family of millionaire psychos that weirdness in New York, that preacher case…I’d think you’d be a natural on the abduction, Ryder. You’ve got an interesting history with psychopaths.”

Maybe because my brother’s crazy,
Ryder
considered saying.
A man accused of killing five women. Or perhaps because I grew up in a house where any wrong word or glance or sound could turn my father from a respected engineer into a violent, raging whirlwind of hate. My brother Jeremy killed my father, was institutionalized for years, escaping months ago, slipping from my hands in New York. I watched my mother die a horrific death, refusing medicine, hoping her pain purchased her way into a Heaven she feared she’d lost by not better protecting my brother and me. I dropped a Masters in psychology to become a cop…after years of studying the worst psychopaths and sociopaths in the penal system.

How about that for history, Sandhill?

Instead, Ryder sighed and shook his head. “Squill doesn’t care about experience, just payback. He installed Meyers as lead, supposedly. But Meyers is run by Duckworth, who happens to be—”

“A wholly owned subsidiary of Squill,” Sandhill said. “Nothing changes, does it? Who had the great fucking idea of putting Squill into Internal Affairs, giving him a springboard back into the action? Probably that dolt, Bidwell. Now Bidwell’s taking orders from Squill. It’s ironic, but what Bidwell deserves, of course.”

Ryder found it interesting that a guy gone from the department for several years was so well informed.

“I’ve got a favor to ask, Mr Sandhill.”

Sandhill held the plate to the side of the table and brushed crumbs on to it with the side of his hand.

“My answer is no.”

“Just see if anyone missed anything. Stop by the department and take a look.”

“The department and I don’t get along.”

Ryder sighed. “I don’t care about your past, Sandhill. We’re in trouble here.”

“The department has shit on its shoes. I’m fine. And you’re either lying or misled; no way Squill wants me within a thousand miles of the MPD.”

“The mayor ordered Squill to contact you.”

“Bullshit, Ryder. The woman doesn’t know me from Adam’s poodle.”

“She asked Squill about former cops who might help. Zemain ran your name up the flagpole, but others kept it flying. Even Bidwell, for crying out loud.”

Sandhill crossed his arms on the table, leaned forward. “So if our new little lady mayor wants me, and Squill is required to act on the request, how is it, Detective Ryder, that you got the dirty job of asking?”

Ryder felt his jaw clench. “Squill’s hated me for years. If I don’t convince you to give the department a few hours to mollify the mayor, Squill will spin it to look like I failed, not him.”

Sandhill leaned back in his chair. He slipped the crown from his head, dusted it with his palm, returned it to his head.

“You’ve got to understand, Detective, I’m gone from the game; I’ve got a new life now. I like it.”

“What you’re saying is, no way?”

“What I’m saying is, if MPD wants my services on a consultation basis, it might be arranged.”

“You mean you’ll charge.”

Sandhill winked. “Nothing gets by you, Detective Ryder. You’re a pro.”

“What sort of, uh, payment you thinking about, Sandhill?”

The Gumbo King pursed his lips, eyes flicking horizontally as if balancing weights on a scale.

“An official apology, both verbal and written; reinstatement of my pension vestment with accrued interest…”

“Come on, Sandhill, they’ll never—”

“And two hundred bucks an hour for my consultation time.”

“You’re crazy.”

The Gumbo King crossed his arms high on his chest.

“So have I spoken, so let it be writ.”

Ryder stood and walked to the door without looking back, wondering what Squill’s next move would be.
Shooting the messenger?
He stepped outside and headed to the departmental Crown Victoria.

“Ryder!” Sandhill bellowed.

Ryder turned to see the restaurateur filling the open doorway, his face expressionless beneath the crown.

“Harry Nautilus,” Sandhill said. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s struggling and it’ll take a while. But he’s on the upswing.”

The door closed without comment.