Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond (11 page)

Chapter 29

“Y
ou’re bleeding all over my sofa, soldier,” Lauren said.

As I became less groggy and my vision improved, I could see the creature hovering over me was Ruth Ann looking like Lauren, and not Lauren herself.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s in your car too. I’ll clean everything—or have it done. I’m really sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you.”

“It’s no trouble, fella. I keep telling you that. There’s no one I’d rather have bleeding on my things than you.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just smiled.

Following our conversation the night before I really thought she’d go back to her hair color and clothes. Why was she still in costume? If anything, she looked even more like Lauren today than she did then.

I was so tired, in so much pain. I was lonely and missing Lauren—missing her like a part of me had been removed. I glanced at where my right arm should be. Losing it, missing it, living without it was nothing compared to the loss of Lauren—the missing, the not living I was doing now.

I thought again about Ruth Ann’s offer. God it would feel so good to lose myself in her, in the illusion of Lauren. Why couldn’t I? Lauren would understand. Hell, she would want me to, so why couldn’t I?

“Jimmy,” Ruth Ann was saying.

“Yeah?”

“Where’d you go?”

“I’m here.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“The way you’re looking at me … like I’m … You thought any more about what we talked about?”

I must have looked confused.

“About me … us … How I feel about you.”

“I have.”

“Have you reconsidered?”

“Why do you ask?”

“The way you were just looking at me.”

“Oh. Sorry. I was just—”

“Don’t be. I like it. Look some more. Look a lot.”

“It’s not that you’re not … It’s not that I don’t want … I just can’t.”

“Okay. Sure. I get it. I just thought … I’m telling you the way you were looking at me.”

I was looking at her, thinking of her. It’s always been her. It always will be.

“Anyway. I understand. I do. And I appreciate it. It’s just … if I were on the receiving end of that kind of … Okay. Let’s get you cleaned and stitched back up. And I’m not kidding—you’ve got to stop opening this wound back up.”

“I’m not doing it by choice,” I said. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. And I’ll be even better soon. Promise. Don’t worry about me, mister. And don’t you go treating me any differently. I still want you here. Still want to help you. I mean it.”

“Any luck getting the girls names or pictures?”

“It’s not as easy as I thought it’d be. Need just a bit more time. I won’t let you down. Promise.”
After Ruth Ann had patched me up and I was cleaned and dressed and ready to begin again, I borrowed her phone to call Delton Rogers.

“Hiya, Jimmy,” he said. “Any headway?”

“Not much, no. Unless you count Butch kidnapping and trying to kill me.”

“Why would you count that?” he said.

“I didn’t. Just thought you might want to.”

“Okay. So let’s count it. What’s it mean?”

“Pretty sure it means he didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened to Pete.”

“Oh yeah? How da you figure?”

“He did it to try to find out what happened to him. Thought I had something to do with it. Planned on squaring it if I did.”

“Could be a cover.”

“I thought of that but Butch ain’t that smart.”

“Good point,” he said. “What are you some kind of detective?”

“Not so you could tell,” I said.

He laughed. “You’re okay, Jimmy. I’ve always said so.”

“Wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep an eye on Butch.”

“Always do,” he said.

“And keep your other out for Cliff Walton.”

“Yeah? Figured he was in Mexico or in a shallow grave or in a shallow grave in Mexico.”

“Saw him downtown a few nights ago.”

“Downtown? You take some chances, don’t you?”

“He’ll know where Howell and the others are. Pete too if he ever made it over there.”

“Sure thing.”

“I got a license plate off the car he was driving. Need you to run it for me.”

“Give it’a me.”

I did.

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

The moment I hung up the phone, it rang.

I started to answer it, but then realized what I was doing and stepped back to let Ruth Ann get it.

“Hello,” she said, then paused. “Hold on.”

She handed me the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey ya, sugga,” Mama Cora said. “How are you?”

“I’m okay, Mama. How are you?”

“Clipper tol’ me how he saved you again. I got word to him the moment that fat cracker led you away from here. Tol’ me later he’s already followin’ him for you at the time.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice full of mirth, “you about to.”

“I am?”

“Yes sir, safe money is you are.”

“Why’s that?”

“I got somethin’ for you. Somethin’ real good. Anarchist chap I know has a place in St. Andrews. Big old three-story house where they have meetings and events—political get-togethers, spiritual awakening encounters, art exhibits, meditation meet-ups. Shit like that.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s a queer fellow. Always thought he was harmless, but … I’ll pick you up in a quarter of an hour, dear.”

“For what? Why? What’s—”

“Didn’t I say?”

“You did not.”

“Because, darlin’, they have a surrealist exhibit installed right now. And several of the pieces bear a remarkable resemblance to your dead girls.”

Chapter 30

“M
ost of these artists, most true surrealists,” Adrian was saying, “see their work as an expression of the movement first and foremost. The medium, method—hell, the art itself, is secondary, an artifact of the philosophy.”

Adrian Fromerson was a dainty, diminutive man, gaudy and gaunt. His bleach-blond hair was short and stood up in jagged clumps like a child who just woke up after having gone to bed with a wet head. His skin was pasty, but only showed on his face and hands. Every other inch of him was covered in a solid black suit and high-neck shirt that looked European. At just under five feet, he had the appearance of a boy playing dress-up.

He was dwarfed by the enormity of Mama Cora’s three hundred plus pounds, which were wrapped in an orange and purple sari, her caramel skin glowing beneath a sheen of perspiration coming mostly from beneath her do-rag.

“Surrealism is a critique of Western culture, a response to its corruption,” Adrian continued. “It’s a fuck-you to conventional bourgeois bullshit. Whereas the Dadaist used protest, subversion, and straight out rebellion, surrealists are more subtle, more pragmatic. It’s an intellectual revolution influenced by Freud and Marx.”

Adrian’s huge house was more a meeting hall and museum than a home, with books and brochures in the foyer, a lecture hall in the living room, crooks and crannies of couches and pillows like something out of Mama Cora’s, and a surrealist art installation everywhere else.

From the outside, it appeared to be an old three-story Victorian, but inside it was both bohemian and radical, the center of a seditious, subversive revolution.

After a brief introduction and overview of his anarchist politics, he was now leading us through the creaky hardwood-floored house showing us the surrealism exhibit.

As best I could tell we were the only people here.

The works combined distorted images, odd perspectives, queer elements, and asymmetrical arrangements.

Human bodies, mostly women, had been deconstructed, disassembled, rearranged. Elongated humans had the heads of animals. Female torsos had dresser drawers opening from them. Men had erect penises for legs. Heads came out of navels. Shapes gave impressions of things far more than any semblance of actual depictions of the things themselves.

“See how the work involves elements of surprise, non sequiturs, and unusual and unexpected juxtapositions?” Adrian asked. “What you’re seeing is liberation. As Guillaume Apollinaire said when he first coined the phrase, it reveals a truth beyond the real, a kind of surreal truth that transcends the obvious and actual. This is what revolution looks like.”

One blobbish white woman in black thigh-high stockings had her breasts on her back so that they formed a kind of companion to her buttocks, the thin hint of a red nightgown showing between them, but she had no head.

Another featured a blue female form with shovels for legs and penises for arms and the head of a hyena. She was walking through a forest of burning trees made mostly of men.

“Can you see? Do you know what this is? It’s the unconscious on canvas, the depiction of dreams, the dissection of the dark corners of the human mind.”

None of the work was as good as what I had seen in some of the books and magazines I’d read, but most weren’t bad and a few were actually pretty good.

“What can you tell me about the artists involved in this show?”

“Most are European members of the movement that came here at the start of the war, but we’ve mixed in a few local and regional artists as well. I even have a piece or three. And Mama should, but I couldn’t convince her.”

“Nothin’ I’m workin’ on is quite finished yet, sugga,” she said. “I’ll have some work ready for the next one. Though … nothin’ I have is as good as any of this.”

“This is nothing. Wait ’til you see the work upstairs.”

The paintings and sculptures on the second floor were far better than the first, their juxtapositions more startling, their disjointedness and disorientation more disconcerting. They were also more sexual and colorful and radical.

“Are you getting it?” he asked me. “Do you see now what is being done and why? In the same way Freud and other psychoanalysts use hypnosis and other techniques to access the inner workings of the mind, surrealists unlock the depths of dreams and thoughts, bringing them up out of the underworld for us to witness. They express it so we can experience it. And it’s exquisite, isn’t it?”

I nodded. It really was. I was moved by them, mesmerized by their dreamlike quality, unsettled by their subversive and perversive power.

But nothing compared with the shock of the third floor—a single room known as Black and White Butchery that looked nearly identical to the crime scene photos of the four female victims.

The room was all black, including the floor. Faceless female mannequins painted white were posed on black silk drop cloths in various stages of disassemble and dissection. Several of the poses looked exactly like the manner in which the killer had arranged and displayed his dolls.

The walls were covered with paintings with strong resemblance to what was on the floor—except the white melting shapes representing the female form were even more dissected and distorted and they were joined by animal parts and other objects, all whitewashed, bright, overexposed, high contrast.

“Oh sweet Lord Jesus,” Mama Cora said as we entered the room.

“What?” Adrian asked in shock. “What is it?”

“Just reminds me of something. That’s all.”

“I assure you this is as original as it gets. You won’t see anything like it anywhere. Are you saying you have?”

“No, sugga. Nothin’ like that.”

“Then what?”

“Who’s the artist?” I asked.

“Flaxon De Grasse. Why?”

“I need to talk to him.”

“You think he the killer?” Mama asked. “Or just inspired him?”

“
Killer
?” Adrian asked in alarm. “What killer? What are you talking about? What’s—”

He stopped abruptly as something caught his eye.

Turning, he walked over, stooped down, and picked up a small framed photograph from next to one of the mannequin displays.

“What the hell is—”

I walked over and looked over his shoulder at the picture. It was of the victim that most closely resembled the mannequin it was placed beside. Of much higher quality and artistic merit, the photograph looked like one from the crime scene set I had seen, but had to have been taken by the killer. I turned to look at the other displays. The other three that matched the victims also had small framed photos beside them.

“These weren’t here before,” Adrian said. “What is this? Are they real? They look real.”

“You know the four girls mentioned in the paper?” Mama said.

“Really? Are you … This is them? Oh my God. That means … the killer has been in my home.”

“Possibly several times,” I said. “How do I get in touch with Flaxon?”

Chapter 31

F
laxon De Grasse lived at the end of a dock in a small shack on St. Andrew Bay. The dock was rickety, the gaps in its planks like missing piano keys, its pilings leaning at odd angles as if injured lovers pulling away from the source of their pain. All the slips were empty, the entire structure appearing abandoned.

It was early afternoon and the November day was bright but cold, the wind whipping off the bay bracing and occasionally biting.

In case De Grasse was the killer, Adrian, who tried to convince me there was no way he could be, had driven Cora home for me. Unable to locate Clip, I had phoned Delton Rogers to meet me. He was on his way—more for backup than anything else—but as I knocked on the sagging screen door I could tell it wouldn’t be necessary. No one was home.

Nearly all of the windows and doors were open. Inside there was no movement, no presence, no sign anyone was there.

I walked down the dock to the next door, looking in the other windows as I did.

The cold breeze was damp and smelled of brine. Beneath the dock, the bay waters bobbed, the sounds of them slapping the pilings joining the cries and shrieks of birds and the distant clanging of riggings.

“Flaxon?” I called through the second screen door. “Anyone home?”

I waited a moment, then called out again—this time even louder.

After a few more moments, I eased the door open and slipped inside.

The small leaning room was dim and dank and obviously his workshop. Chains and hooks hanging from the ceiling and coming out of the walls held the dismembered parts of white mannequins. They dangled and rocked, their chains rattling with the shifting and creaking of the cabin.

His work area was dirty and disorganized, littered with trash and empty wine bottles—hundreds of empty wine bottles. Though old and well worn, his tools were in good shape and he had plenty of them. There was no question they could dismember a human body, but there was no evidence that they ever had.

The door connecting the workshop with the living area was open and I walked through it and into a room similar in size that held a cot, a small kitchen table with one chair, an old, scarred wardrobe, a rocking chair, and stacks of papers and books. Framed paintings leaned against the walls, none of it hung, all of it his work, and this room held even more trash and wine bottles. Like the workshop floor, the few spots of this one that were not actually covered were grime-streaked and paint-specked.

There was no bathroom or kitchen, and as far as I could tell, there was no electricity or plumbing. A couple of kerosene lanterns seemed the only sources of light when night fell.

I looked around a bit. In addition to art and philosophy books, most of the other literature seemed similar to what was in the foyer of Adrian’s place.

From the workshop behind me, a small gray cat slunk into the room, part of a fish head in its mouth.

I looked around a little more but there was nothing else to see.

When I stepped out of the shack and began heading back down the dock, I could see Delt at the other end.

He wasn’t alone.

Flanked by a detective I didn’t recognize and two uniforms I did, he had come to arrest me.

As soon as they saw me, the two uniforms drew their guns.

Delt said something to them, then walked out to meet me alone as they lowered, but didn’t holster, their weapons.

I walked slowly toward him. We met near the middle, far enough away from the others so they couldn’t hear us.

“Delt,” I said.

“Jimmy.”

“Why now?” I asked. “You could’ve done this several times already.”

“You dealt this play, partner.”

“How’s that?”

“Dispatcher recognized your voice. Told the captain.”

I nodded.

“Left me no options.”

“There are always options.”

“Didn’t see any,” he said. “Sorry, pal.”

H
enry Folsom was a large man. Everything about him was thick. He was tall and middle-aged, but muscular—only some of which was beginning to turn to fat. He was a decent man, a tough and honest cop, and, at one time, he had been my boss.

“Jimmy,” he said when he walked into the interview room.

“Captain.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “That’s what we’re here to find out. But you know me. I’m fair. And at one time you were one of mine. In some ways I feel like you still are. You’ll get a square deal from me and every break I can give you—and no matter what you did, I’ll look out for you.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“I’m gonna be handling everything myself from this end, but because you used to work here, a detective from Tallahassee is going to conduct the interview and the investigation. You wanna attorney?”

I shook my head.

“You sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay then. Let’s get started.”

He opened the door, and a trim man in a pressed shirt and spotless suit came in carrying a tablet of paper, a pencil, and a briefcase.

“This is Detective McDonald.”

Balding with beady eyes behind small glasses, he looked more like an accountant than a cop.

“Call me Derris,” he said.

After he placed his paper and pencil on the table and the briefcase carefully beside it, he extended his hand and I shook it.

“I’ve been told a lot about you,” he said. “And I like what I’ve heard. You were a good cop, a hero. Some say you’re a good detective and maybe you are. Maybe you’re an innocent as I am. And maybe you’re not. The point is, I’m only trying to find the truth. And at this moment I have no opinion about what that is. Understand? So tell me, what’s the truth?”

“Before we get to any of that,” I said, turning to Captain Folsom. “There’s something you need to know. The place where I was when they picked me up … the man who lives there has a connection to the killings—the four women that were dismembered.”

“How do you even know they were—”

I cut him off and explained how I got involved and what led me to Flaxon. “I’m not saying he’s the killer, just that there’s a connection. May just be that his art is inspiring the killer. I don’t know. But I wanted you to be able to follow up on it as soon as possible.”

“I’ll let our guys know.”

He stepped out of the room, leaving the door ajar, and McDonald and I waited, remaining silent until he returned.

While he was away, I thought some more about how I could tell them what I needed to without revealing the part Lauren played. She was so integral, both to what happened and to me, my involvement, my … everything—how could I … She
was
the story. It began and ended with her.

“Okay,” McDonald said. “Let’s have it.”

“The whole thing had to do with politics—the mayoral race. Frank Howell was behind it. He used a guy named Cliff Walton. Walt worked for the current mayor Harry Lewis, but was really there to spy, bully, and blackmail. He tried to kill me the night I left town with Lauren Lewis. I shot him in the leg and got away. I called Detective Mitchell and told him everything and where everyone involved was. They had all gathered at Howell’s. He called his new partner Butch for backup. You can verify that. Butch got a call and was told to the report to the crime scene where the second of the four female victims was found. He was told Pete would be contacted and told the same thing, but Pete never showed. Later, when Butch went to Howell’s, everyone was gone and there was no sign of Pete. He hasn’t been seen since.”

“You’re saying you had nothing to do with the deaths of Freddy Moats, Margie Lehane, that little hood named Cab, your secretary, your partner—and the only one who can verify it is missing?”

“No. I’m saying—”

“You’ve said enough,” Harry Lewis said.

I looked up to see him standing in the doorway.

“This man was working for me and my wife when the crimes you’re asking him about were committed. Not only were the victims brutally beaten in a manner impossible for a one-armed man—a left arm at that—but he was with me during the time of each murder. I’ll swear to it in court. He has acted nobly and honorably and does not deserve to be treated like anything other than the hero he is. Now, he’s leaving with me. Or you can try to arrest us both and see how that works out for you.”