I stared at the slatted door and replayed what I’d learned during Miss Gracie’s tour. I now knew my location. I knew who was in here with me, and perhaps a bit of why.
I tried to mesh the information with what Crandell’s questions had suggested. I’d repeatedly told him Taneesha and Dani’s relationship was no more than brief mentoring on Dani’s part. But his insistence and the direction of his questions led me to a conclusion: Crandell was sure that whatever Taneesha had uncovered or been looking into had been shared with Dani.
“Buck Kincannon is Danbury’s boyfriend,” I remembered screaming, the pain a blazing rope stretched from my groin to my brain. “Have that bastard verify it.”
“Buck got the bitch off the street,” Crandell had replied. “That’s his end of it for now.”
Off the street?
I repeated the phrase in my mind. Had Dani’s promotion from investigative reporter to anchor been a scheme to pull her inside, keep her busy with new tasks to learn? Kept under watch? The methodology fit: Move the potentially troublesome piece to a new board, as with Pettigrew.
Dani’s insistence that someone had been in her house now seemed likely. Buck Kincannon had taken her out that night so Crandell or some lock-picking subcontractor could get inside, search for notes, for some tie between Dani and Taneesha.
But the suspicions of Dani’s potential involvement demonstrated a lack of knowledge about journalists, their ferocity in protecting stories. The rush-hot pinnacle of the craft was breaking a fresh story, the celebrated exclusive. Even a fledgling like Taneesha Franklin would have kept her cards tight to her bosom.
Crandell had not believed me: I could have been screaming that the earth was flat.
The door pushed open. I held my breath. Miss Gracie clattered the cart into the room, snapped open a diaper. She dropped it into the wastebasket beside my bed. I raised an eyebrow and she tapped the bag slung on the IV holder.
“The bottle got muscle-relaxing dope in it. Keep you too loose-kneed to walk if you manage to get up. I messed with the tubes a bit, got it dripping onto a diaper in the waste can. Unless you want me to keep the IV in for the pain.”
“No!”
She snapped her finger to her lips, frowned. “Shhhh. I never know when he gonna walk in, checking.”
“Crandell?”
She closed her eyes, her face a mask of sorrow.
“Craziness. Jus’ like it was four years back. Last year, too. Ever’ time that nasty man’s here, the world fall into hell.”
She reached for a second diaper, snapped it open. I arched my back and let her perform her tasks.
“Tell me more about Lucas,” I said. “His youth. Did you know him back then?”
“Mister Lucas was a crazy type, wild notions. It was like everyone else was running on little batteries and Lucas got plugged in to the full two-twenty volts. He’d take angry fits: yellin’ at parties, saying what a bunch of fakes they all were, stomping away wishing he lived with a normal family. One time he started a big fire. Lift yo’ butt.”
“Fire?”
“There was a family gathering. It was like usual. Ever’one came to Mister Buck’s. Someone said something and Mister Nelson ran outside and began beating on Mister Racine’s new car with a lamp. Them folks never stop fighting. There was a big howling set-to until the fire started. You can set your butt down now.”
“Lucas set a fire in the house?”
“He splashed charcoal lighter on some flowers outside, tossed a match. Then he put on another of his big screaming shows, calling ever’one names, saying what a bunch of hypocrites they all were.”
An earlier mention of Lucas and fire made me suspect pyromania, one of the major markers of a serial killer’s pathology. But the pyromaniac is generally elusive and secretive: setting fires in abandoned buildings, off-hours construction sites, parked cars. The setter often retreats a short distance and watches in anonymity as clamor ensues.
Behold my power.
“Lucas didn’t run off?” I asked.
“He stood there watchin’, jumping up and down, screaming what a bunch of idiots they all were, how he wished they were all dead. Miz Kincannon was bad upset, I heard. Crying. An’ that woman never cries.”
It stopped me: Maylene Kincannon crying?
I figured it took incredible emotional turmoil to evoke tears in someone devoted to absolute control. I wondered if Lucas’s behavior had plunged Maylene Kincannon into her past. Made her terrified that her shrieking, fire-setting son was transmogrifying into a maniacal killer, like the sad and savage brother in her dysfunctional family.
What could someone do with that kind of fear? I wondered.
A motion through his window caught Harry Nautilus’s eye, headlights moving slow down the street, one light dimmer than the other, ready to fail. A minute later, the same car passed again.
Nautilus went outside to sit on the porch.
The car made a third pass. The brake lights flashed and the car slid to the curb. Pace Logan got out. He shot a nod at Nautilus, started up the walk, hands in his pockets. Logan stopped at the steps to the gallery. He looked uneasy, blew out a breath.
“Listen, Nautilus, I wanted to say I’m sorry. About Ryder. I, uh…”
“It’s all right, Logan. Thanks.”
Logan looked into the street and cracked his knuckles one by one, then toyed with his watchband. He wants to say something else, Nautilus thought.
“Have a seat, Pace. Can I get you a drink?”
Logan looked surprised at the offer, or the use of his first name, or both. He sat in a wicker chair carefully, as if afraid Nautilus would pull it from beneath him.
“That’d be nice…Harry. Bourbon and water, if you got it. Thanks.”
Nautilus returned a minute later with the drink. Logan took a sip of bourbon, spun the glass in his palms. His cowboy boots tapped his nervousness.
“I was always happy as a street cop, Harry. It was good work that needed doing. Sometimes you had to think fast, but you didn’t have to think deep, y’know? I was comfortable with that. But then, time goes on. When you meet people, tell ’em, ‘I’m a cop,’ they’re like so what? Or, Hey, can you get a ticket fixed for me? But tell ’em you’re a detective and suddenly they’re seeing Kojak or Law and Order. It was an ego thing, the chance to make like something more’n a guy that drove around knocking heads and standing between people yellin’ at one another.”
Logan spun the glass a long moment.
“I’m not a very good detective, Harry. Not like you. It eats at me, sometimes.”
“Pace, you don’t have to-”
“It goes back to that night in the rain, Harry. Taneesha Franklin. That’s why I’m here, I think. To tell you a story.”
Nautilus felt electricity sparkle up his back. Said, “I’m listening.”
“Shuttles likes to cut me down like I’m a relic, telling me how law enforcement’s becoming so scientific… Did you know this about latents, Pace? Did you know that about DNA? Did you know satellites can track a car from a hundred-whatever miles up? Did you know the new generation of cruiser cameras can read license tags from four hundred feet away?”
“I didn’t know that,” Nautilus said. “Maybe I’m a relic, too.”
“Shuttles loves talking about all the new crime-solving hoo-hah: computers, cameras, geo-whatever locators-anything that makes me come off like a dinosaur.” Logan cleared his throat. “I say this so you’ll know I don’t like Shuttles-I hate the cocky little prick, Harry-but I don’t think I’m letting it mess with my judgment.”
“I believe you, Pace. Go on.”
“I was seeing a lot of the same scenery that night. Shuttles was driving and just cruising one quadrant of the district. I said, come on, Tyree, move it around some. So he moved a couple streets over. I thought, Fuck it, the kid’s like a stuck needle. Then he told me how you’d been talking behind my back about what a lousy cop I was for screwing up that one case.”
“Pace, believe me, I never said a thing like-”
Logan held up a broad hand. “I know, Harry, leastwise I do now. Then the call came, you and Carson heading for the scene. But after Shuttles’s goading I wanted to get there first, grab it from you.”
“But after you got there, you turned the case over to us, Pace. Why?”
“When I saw what had happened in that car, I knew you guys would do better than me and some fresh-from-a-uniform kid.”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to-”
“I been thinking about that night, Harry: After you and me had our little scuffle, I was leaning against the Mazda to catch my breath. Then I saw a plastic bag floating in the gutter, riding high as a sailboat, just starting to get pounded under by the rain. It was about then Shuttles found the knife. Am I crazy, or does that seem strange?”
Nautilus thought a few seconds. Saw what Logan was getting at.
“It could mean a whole lot, Pace. Depends on the rain flow and where Shuttles was standing.”
Logan sipped from his drink. “A couple weeks back I slipped two pictures out of the murder book. I wanted to refresh my head on the lay of the land. The rainwater was rushing away from where Shuttles found the knife.”
Nautilus looked at the aging detective, raised an eyebrow. “What you planning on doing with this observation, Pace?”
Logan smiled sadly, slapped Nautilus on the knee. Stood and shook stiffness from his legs.
“What I just did, Harry, hand it to someone who knows more than me. I’m probably just imagining things, but I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for the time and the drink.”
Logan stepped from the gallery, headed down the walk toward his car. Logan got inside, fired up the engine, pulled away. I blew it, Nautilus thought, watching the retreating taillights. I looked at Logan’s bumbling and fumbling, filed him under Lazy, filed him under Dimwit. Instead, I could have said, “Pace, sometimes this stuff can get complicated; here’s an idea you might want totry…”