The Midnight Road (9 page)

“Christina Shepard was born Crissy Bragg. The ‘Crissy’ is official, it’s on her birth certificate. Her father, Martin Bragg, was hard-core military, a lifer. She grew up an Army brat, mostly down South.”

“I knew I heard the accent.”

“Mother died of cancer when she was nine. She went out of this world in a bad way, in pieces. Had to have her vocal cords removed, then a lung, both legs. Et cetera.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Ole Marty Bragg retired a colonel three years ago after he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Tumors. They wanted to open his skull, but he refused any kind of treatment.”

Flynn figured he’d do the same when his time came. After seeing his own mother die slowly, surgery by surgery, he’d never go in for radiation or chemo or wait his turn to go under the knife. He didn’t have that kind of strength.

“And six months ago he croaked?”

“Two years back he started acting unpredictable in public. The cancer was eating into his brain’s center of rational thought. Wild shifts in personality. He started carrying his guns in public, thought the Russians and the Koreans and whoever the hell else were flying overhead. It became worse over time. He got off a few rounds at a school playground one afternoon. The kids were in class and no one was hurt, but he started yelling about throwing babies in a well and it made the local authorities come down on him. He was arrested but the Army doctors stepped in, got him released. They were going to have him committed, I suppose, but instead he jumped in the Chatalaha River, which branches into the deep cypress swamps. As you might guess, the body was never found. Which is why Crissy Shepard may have spoken about him in the present tense.”

“Or maybe his corpse showed up at her house one day with Nuddin in tow.”

“There is that,” she said. “And he might blame you for her death. And he might want revenge. And he is going insane.”

Flynn said, “There is that.”

He tried to work out the angles but kept hitting walls. He thought he just wasn’t crazy enough to see his way clear, or at least not crazy enough in the way he needed to be. It was a pretty rude awakening, knowing that his brain damage just wasn’t the right kind. “But if he wanted me dead for killing his daughter, why wouldn’t he just zap me? Why have a pro deliver a note and then whack her instead?”

“Listen, I dug a little further into their family history. Even though they’re proud of their heritage, the Bragg dynasty is not known for its mental and physical well-being. A lot of it’s just hearsay and rumors, but it’s the kind of thing that winds up in reports and on file. People write down their suspicions, and they’re believed down through the years. Bragg’s forefather slave owners would do naughty things with the field hands out in the tobacco patches, then throw the mixed-race newborns down a well.”

“Ah-ha.”

“Ah-ha is right. Who knows what he had in his head at the end.”

“If it was the end. What’d you dig up on Nuddin?”

“Nothing. No record of him at all.”

“How can that be?”

“You’ve seen it here in New York, for Christ’s sake. People ashamed of their kids, locking them up in cellars, crack babies born in apartments in the Bronx.”

“But most of them still had birth records and documentation.”

“Most isn’t all. They were down in swamp country, they do things differently there. Midwives.”

“Maybe.”

It was a reach. An Army bigwig wasn’t a burnt-out prostitute living in squalor off the social radar. But who knew what kind of thoughts Bragg had in is head even before the tumors. Flynn hoped Shepard didn’t die in his sleep. He had to talk to him.

Flynn leaned against the phone and watched the foot traffic through Greenwich Village. There was a Ray’s Pizza stand nearby and he caught a whiff of mozzarella and his stomach rumbled.

He could hear Sierra shrug in her chair. “I suppose a colonel could have certain documentation destroyed if he wanted. Out of shame. Fear of stigma, maybe. But why go to the trouble of caging him up? Why not just put him away? If Bragg had so much pull and could cover his tracks, then he could’ve put Nuddin away in a facility with no publicity. Nuddin could’ve been helped.”

“Or Bragg could’ve just killed him,” Flynn said.

“Yeah, there’s that too. Shepard’s not awake yet?”

“No, and there’ve been complications. His blood pressure took an almost fatal dip. They’re calling him ‘unresponsive.’”

“Nicer than saying he’s in a coma.”

“They say he’s going to wake up, they just don’t know when.”

“Speaking of unresponsive, you haven’t been in to the office.”

“Very sweet segue,” Flynn said.

“Don’t try to divert me. You’ve got cases.”

“Turn them over to someone else. I’ve got to stay off the map for a while until I figure this thing out. See if Angela Soto was targeted because of me. If it really has to do with Shepard or not. Find out how involved I am. If it really is my fault.”

“You doing this for us? To make sure nobody hands us little notes to give to you?”

“Well, let me ask you, do you want a bullet in the face?”

Sierra let out the laugh that he always dreaded. “As a matter of fact, I’ve already had two,” she told him, which put him back on his heels. You never could get over on Sierra by talking that kind of shit.

He let it go by and asked, “How are Kelly and Nuddin doing with you?”

“Kelly was fine until we told her about her mother. It was such a shock that hearing about her father being shot hardly made a ripple. I haven’t mentioned he’s in a coma yet, and she hasn’t asked. I dropped Bragg’s name to her but she showed no recognition. Either he’s just Grandpa to her or she never met him or she doesn’t remember him. She’s withdrawn and a little sullen, but she never broke down and still hasn’t cried.”

“When it hits, it’ll hit hard.”

“You got that right. Hopefully it’ll happen soon, and she won’t keep it pent up until she’s thirty. As for Nuddin, he’s playful and loves being with the other kids. He’s good for Kelly, watches over her. He likes television even though he doesn’t know what’s going on. If there’s a laugh track, he laughs along. Whenever the kids play ball, he sits on the sidelines and cheers.”

“No moodiness? Anger or resentment?”

“None. He doesn’t sleep well and sometimes I find him sitting alone in the dark or walking around in the kitchen. That’s normal enough. Despite having the mentality of a child, he is a grown man and probably doesn’t much like going to bed at nine o’clock. He sits a lot with my oldest kid, Trevor, and watches him play video games. Trevor, he’s sixteen, a juvie with both parents in prison for selling cocaine. He’s very responsible, helps out with the younger ones a lot. There’s abuse in his history and I think he’s picking up on Nuddin’s damage as well. He’s a little more taciturn than I expected, but not everyone takes to the mentally challenged, you know? Nuddin looks a little weird, it’s bound to strike a chord in some people, especially teens who think they look and feel a little peculiar themselves.”

“Is it going to be a problem?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Who watches him during the day, when the kids are at school?”

“Trevor dropped out. He got his GED and wants to go to college, but for the time being I pay him to watch over the others, and he takes online courses. It works to everyone’s benefit. Anyway, don’t you have enough troubles of your own without worrying about my house?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Can I see Kelly yet?”

“No,” Sierra told him, hitting him with that fed-up tone the way his mother used to do. “After she vents she’ll begin to heal. Sometime after that you can come around, although I don’t know why you would want to.”

“Yes, you do.”

She let out a raw sigh. “Yeah, I suppose I do. How are you holding up?”

“Fair,” he said.

He almost told her about Zero but couldn’t quite commit to doing so. She was already giving him enough attitude, he didn’t need more.

She said, “If I found out all this, about Bragg, then so did the cops. That Raidin is playing a loaded hand with you. Keeping you out on the street as bait. He should have you in protective custody.”

“It’s only a theory so far, and I’m still too iffy at this point. Raidin thinks I’m directly involved somehow and not telling him the whole truth.” The police car tailing him had moved around the corner and was parked on the opposite side of the street now. He could see the cops talking in a bored fashion. He imagined they were discussing whether they should run out and nab a slice of Ray’s pizza. “So they’re gonna keep watching me.”

“Your phone might be tapped then.”

“What do I care?”

Flynn scanned the surrounding rooftops and fire escapes, trying to catch a glimpse of Bragg up there with a high-powered rifle, maybe with a telescopic sight centered on Flynn’s right eye. What would be going through the mind of a man like that? Cancer destroying his mind black inch by black inch, hoping there was time enough for one final act of personal justice. A guy who imprisoned and tortured his own son for being imperfect. A husband who’d lost someone he loved to the doctors and machines, bone by bone. A man driven by some of the same horror that Flynn had endured. A soldier who learned to murder without any hate in his heart. A father with a drowned daughter who had taken her frenzy to the cold depths. A maniac whose great-great-grandfather had drunk water from a well filled with dead babies.

SIX

The Charger sat in the parking lot behind his apartment complex, near his front door, frozen cement solid. After examining it for evidence, the cops had towed it to his parking lot and plunked it down in the exact spot he’d always parked in, practically outside his patio. What the police expected to find in a car washed to the bottom of the Long Island Sound, he didn’t know, but they seemed to run in small circles with very little knowledge of why they were doing the things they did.

Flynn kept hearing Danny’s voice in his head, telling him not to give up on the car. He would start to answer aloud and stop himself in time. Of course he planned on repairing the Charger. It would take as much money as time, but he had no choice. Both he and his brother had died in it. He’d blow his savings to get it back up and running. The car had some kind of mystical resonance now. It connected him to himself more than ever. The car was packed full of ghosts, including his own.

He awoke in the middle of the night to find his mother standing over his bed, staring down with a brittle expression. It happened three nights in a row. They didn’t feel like dreams.

He was waiting for the next message.

The following morning he drove over to Sierra’s and parked down the block, watching her place hoping for a glimpse of Kelly and Nuddin. It was important to see the girl, to quell some of the fear about her welfare. He had to put it to rest and know she was all right. He kept his hands on the wheel of his rental, squeezing tightly and feeling none of the muscle or cool he would’ve gotten from the Charger.

Some of the older foster kids rushed out the front door, heading down the block toward the bus stop. He waited impatiently, feeling more and more awkward just sitting there parked with the engine running, wondering if anybody was going to call the cops and try to get him rapped as a pedo. His heart hammered, the anger rising because Sierra refused to let him see the girl when he needed to. She didn’t fully understand. She hadn’t been down in the basement or out there on the ice.

He watched Sierra step out the front door and walk the smaller kids to the bus stop, the way that Flynn’s mother used to take him by the hand every day and lead him up the sidewalk. Children hung on Sierra and she swung them along while they laughed, refusing to put their feet down. His mother had called him a little monkey and these kids were doing the same kind of thing. Sierra moved along, careful of the ice on the cement. The older children were firing snowballs all over the place.

A moment ago Flynn had been getting pissed but now he felt a sudden warmth for her, knowing how strong and loving she was, how hip and on the ball, especially given the life she’d had to lead.

Kelly trailed at the back of the line of children, walking easily, chin up, smiling even though no one was speaking to her. It made Flynn grin. She looked a little unhappy, but not gloomy or heavily pensive the way he had thought. Just seeing her shifted his whole mood. He felt the muscles in his back loosen. She was doing all right.

The bus swung past him, grinding down into second, then first, as it passed him and pulled over to the curb, blocking his view. He only had another moment to watch Kelly, an aching loss already building, and then he could only see the side of the bus and the blurred movements of children moving down the aisle. He waited for her face to appear in one of the windows closest to him, but she must’ve sat on the opposite side. The bus pulled off and he watched Sierra trundle back to her car, climb in and drive off to work.

He waited a little while longer and saw the teenager, Trevor, and Nuddin in the kitchen window, standing by the sink. They were washing dishes together. Trevor rinsing, Nuddin standing with a dishrag but unable to quite get the circular motion of drying down. He hoped Nuddin would lift his gaze and make eye contact, but he never did. Flynn put the rental car in gear and drove back to his apartment.