The Last Clinic (17 page)

“What I said earlier still goes. You change your mind, you let me know. The pay is much better than what you’re getting, I promise you. A woman like you, a detective from the Sheriff’s Department, I could build a whole show around you. Put your name on the marquee. You know what they say? Nothing excites a man more than the sight of a woman with a loaded gun.”

Darla thought of the men she’d shot. “You know, that’s been my experience too.”

17

There’s More Where This Came From.

She was having the dream with the boy again. She couldn’t see him, but knew he was younger this time, three or four years old. They were in yet another big house—an antebellum mansion this time, but the walls were whitewashed and sunlight was streaming in the windows. Maybe it wasn’t an antebellum mansion after all. Maybe it was a Mediterranean villa.

As usual, she could hear the boy laughing, peals of laughter, as though someone was tickling him. She followed the sound of his voice into an adjoining room. He wasn’t there, but someone else was. Dr. Nicoletti. He was in a white suit with white shirt, but no tie. He was drinking an espresso.

“I’ve seen you in a Fellini movie,” she said. “Did I mention I get Netflix?”

“I’ll help you,” he said. “With the boy, that is.”

“You were shorter in the movie. Or maybe it was just the camera angles.”

“You understand, we may not find him,” he said. “Things don’t always turn out the way we want.”

Then came the damn phone again.

She ignored the first ring and heard herself in the dream say, “But what about all the assholes in the world?”

“You can always send them to an Elvis concert,” he said and smiled at her like it was joke between them that they’d shared many times before but was still funny.

 “Lulu wants to know if you’ve ever sheared sheep?” She made him set the espresso down. Then she took his hand to her face, and he caressed her cheek.

A second ring. “Shit,” she said, waking up. She picked up her cell and heard someone on the other end—a man—clear his throat.

It’s him
, she thought.
The sheep-shearing movie star
.

“Mrs., ah, Detective Cavannah?”

It wasn’t him. This guy didn’t sound Italian. He sounded Southern, a twangy Mississippi accent, a little like Shelby’s. She felt disappointed and relieved at the same time. Then the weirdness of the situation hit her. Why would Dr. Nicoletti be calling?

“This is John Ravenswood.”

She searched her memory, but couldn’t place the name.

“How are you today?” he said.

He was friendly sounding, this guy, making her think it might be a run-up to a sales pitch. The telemarketers, they always began by asking you how you are today. Then they’d launch into their pitch. It always involved getting something free for two months if you’ll just give them a credit card number and agree to pay for shipping and handling. But the shipping and handling costs were more than the item itself.

“What is it you want?”

 “I beg your pardon Detective. I didn’t mean to call at the wrong time. I’m the postmaster over at the Fondren Post Office. We met the other day. You gave me your card. You said how you were Hugh’s wife and all. Hugh the Glue.”

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and wondered if Kendall had made coffee. Then, closing her eyes, she saw Dr. Nicoletti, the way he handled the espresso cup, holding it so delicately with those long fingers.

“I’m sorry. Please go on.”

“You said to call you if we got any deliveries for box ten twenty-six. Well, we got one. Just one piece. It’s a letter. Standard size.”

She sat up in bed now and began searching on the floor with her feet, trying to find her slippers.

“Who’s it from? Is there a return address?”

“It’s from Parish State Bank. Are you familiar with them? They’re a little bank from over the Vicksburg Bridge, in Louisiana. I can’t say for sure, but from the envelope and all, my guess would be it’s a monthly statement.”

“A bank statement?”

“Looks that way. Addressed to RJA Enterprises.”

“Good. Hang on to the letter. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

Kendall was in the living room, back from the morning run, sitting on the sofa in her shorts. The photo album was spread out on her lap. Her eyes were red from where she had been crying.

“I figure if I do this often enough, eventually all the tears will be gone,” she said.

“That hasn’t worked for me so far,” said Darla.

Kendall dabbed at her eyes with tissue. “Where you off to so early, tall girl?”

“I’m going to read somebody else’s mail.” Let her try to top that line.

“Tell me if you find something juicy. I could use some vicarious excitement in my life right about now.”

“You did it again,” said Darla.

Ten minutes later, Darla was at the post office opening the envelope. Ravenswood was right. A bank statement for RJA Enterprises. She scanned the statement, then came back and went over it item by item. Then went over it a third time.

“Uther needs to see this” she said to herself.

The postmaster must have heard her. “Luther?” he said.

“No. Uther, like King Arthur’s father.”

He looked at her funny.

“It’s not important.

She thanked him, signed for the letter and left for the FUSION Center.

When she stuck her head into Uther’s cubicle, his face was six inches from the computer screen. He looked like a high school science nerd peering through a microscope. She called his name, but he didn’t look up. Finally, she put her hand in front of the screen.

“Sorry, Detective. I was navigating
My Other Life
.”

On the computer, strange animated creatures—some human, some not—walked along a digital beach.

“It’s a virtual reality environment. I find an alternate identity stimulating at times.”

“Please tell me you didn’t select a white person for an avatar.”

“Heaven’s no. My avatar is an Asian. By my estimate, they will be the dominant racial group in another hundred years. It’s a matter of numbers. Do you belong to a virtual reality world?”

“I get Netflix. I also watch my dead husband’s football highlight reel, when I’m not out doing whatever it is we do at the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department. Plus I have a very active dream life.”

She returned her attention to the screen trying to figure out what was going on. Uther caught her and logged out of the virtual world.

“I want you to know, this is my lunch hour. I would never abandon my post during working hours.”

“Of course not. Still I wouldn’t go into a lot of detail about alternate realities with Shelby. I don’t think he’s big on that kind of thing.”

“Discretion is advised. I understand.”

She handed him the letter.

“What do you make of this?”

He sat up straight in his chair and scanned the statement just once, taking maybe five seconds to eyeball the three pages.

“Judging by last month’s activity, it doesn’t appear that Mr. Conway was lying about his history of payoffs. Four deposits, three thousand dollars each, every Monday and a number of withdrawals at two- or three-day intervals throughout the month. But no checks. And no purchases. No authorizations. Only cash withdrawals. And they’re from different ATMs in various states. There are three from Kansas followed by two in Oklahoma, then four more in Denver, two in Texas, then the two in Missouri somewhere, and one in Illinois.” He said all this looking at her, not the letter.

“Summarize. Give me a top line. What’s going on?”

“I would have to conclude that the card user is on some sort of a road trip.”

“I’d have to conclude that too.”

Uther opened the bottom drawer of his desk and produced a road atlas. He flipped through the pages until he found the right section.

“You in the habit of keeping a map in your desk, Uther?”

Uther, studying the atlas, said, “It falls upon me to escort my Auntie on a family reunion in West Texas this summer. This could be done online but there’s something romantic about a paper map.”

He took a ballpoint pen and marked all the towns where there had been cash withdrawals and connected them.

“It appears that Reverend Aldridge was supplying funds for a multi-state excursion of some sort, but the person using the card doesn’t seem to be headed in just one direction. Assuming it’s just one person. This suggests that the reason for moving about may be time driven—the need to be in certain places at certain times, or dynamic—they’re responding to changing, specific non-geographical information or directives.”

“Maybe you could print that off for me, what you just said?”

“As to the mission, I suppose it is possible that Reverend Aldridge was sponsoring a fellow preacher out ministering, like the Apostle Paul, to various far-flung congregations. As I say, it’s one explanation. Though I doubt it’s the correct explanation.”

“You and me both. Ask Shelby to get a subpoena on the account. When you get it, fax a copy to Parish State Bank and get access to the account. Have them email all the statements to you for the last year. Let’s see if the same activity holds up month in and month out. I’m betting it will. We’ll also be able to see exactly what stops were made on this little road trip.”

“What if the account is being accessed by more than one individual?”

“Good point. Even if the current activity is from one card, there may be other cards in use for this account. Some banks let you get as many cards as you want. Ask the people at Parish State Bank to see how many were issued and when. Also, request a video record of the withdrawals at the various ATM stations. Maybe we can get a positive ID. At the very least, we’ll know if it’s a man or a woman. And most important, I need you to stay on top of the card activity. If whoever it is starts using the same ATM over and over, maybe we can have the local police pick them up for questioning.”

“Since the individual in question has transversed state lines, would it not be in order to alert the FBI? They have representation here at FUSION.”   

“Not until we know more. I’ve worked with the Feds before. They don’t pay a lot of attention unless you’ve got specifics. At present we don’t even have a theory about intent.”

Uther adjusted his thick glasses, folded his fingers, and cracked his knuckles like a safe cracker getting ready to ply his trade.

“Thus we come to the point of my endeavors, Detective. It is my theory that thousands upon thousands of crimes are committed every day, but law enforcement is incapable of recognizing them. Why, you ask? Well, you didn’t, but I will provide the answer. The answer is one cannot hope to recognize such crimes until one discovers an abnormality in the social and anthropological environment, the contextual atypicality. Then, and then only, the hidden crime becomes visible. It stands in relief. Am I being clear?”

“So just do whatever it is that you do, Uther, atypicality and all that other stuff.”          

“Right. But while I’m doing what it is that I do, what will you be doing, Detective?”

“I’m driving down to Natchez. To a place called Hemings Mansion. Ever hear of it?”

“I must answer in the negative. But wasn’t Sally Hemings the slave that bore Thomas Jefferson’s bastard children?”

“Now that you mention it, yes.”

“An odd choice for a bed and breakfast, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t think that’s the line of business they’re in.”

“What is it exactly that you seek to discover at this so-called Hemings Mansion?”

“The secret desires of the Southern male. Make that the Southern white male.”

“Yes, well, there’s a subject for a thesis.”

18

The Town They Didn’t Burn.

After his injury, when she and Hugh were talking about moving to Jackson, Darla asked him for a description.

“I’m thinking stately mansions and mossy oaks, the scent of magnolia in the air, that kind of thing,” she had said.

“Jackson is, well, it’s home, Doll. It’s where I’m from. My family has a business there. That’s why we’re going. As to the other stuff, I wouldn’t expect too much if I were you.”

How right he had been. Marauding Yankees had burned the great mansions of the pre-civil war era to the ground, along with the rest of the city. Afterwards people called it “Chimneyville.” Chimneys were the only structures left standing. One hundred and fifty years later, the city was little more than a hodge-podge of state office buildings, decaying neighborhoods, and tacky strip malls, divided east and west by eight lanes of I-55. The city of Jackson had the sterility of a suburb and the crime rate of a big city.

Natchez was another story. The Yankees spared it, leaving modern-day Natchez with the finest collections of antebellum architecture and furniture found anywhere in the South.

The old South lived on in its citizenry as well. Each spring, when the azaleas and magnolias were in their fullest bloom, the lovingly preserved mansions of Natchez, most now privately owned, were opened to the public. Hoop skirted young women guided tour groups through the homes, pointing out the architecture, artifacts, and relics of the city’s former glory days. Modern-day Natchez seemed to exist for no other reason than to remember its past.

The instructions on the card Conway gave her were explicit. “Take Jefferson Davis Avenue exactly 10.3 miles north of the city limits. Look for a left-hand turn onto an unmarked road. The mailbox at the side of the road will say
Hemings
, in handwritten letters.”

From that point, she followed a smooth gravel driveway for three-quarters of a mile through a grove of live oak trees. She came to an electric gate, stopped her car and was about to get out when the gate opened. She drove through the gate, which closed behind her. Then she made a steady climb for another half mile. A four-columned mansion lay straight ahead, adorning the top of a hillside. As she reached the driveway, she saw the land to the rear of the mansion roll downward, and at the bottom, nearly a half-mile below, the banks of the Mississippi River.