Читать книгу Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls - J. Kerley A. - Страница 16

Three stacks of photographs rested on his green Formica table-top: one large, one modest, one small. The only other items on the table were chrome shears and a magnifying glass. The air was hot and windless but he didn’t feel it. Nor did he hear the roar of trucks a quarter mile distant on I–10, or the whine of jets approaching or departing Mobile’s airport. He was working with the pictures and they demanded relentless attention.

They would change the universe.

The largest stack, pushed to the table’s farthest edge, were the Culls, upside down so he didn’t have to look at them. Emaciated wigs or fat as hogs, matted with hair, or puckered with scars. The Culls were disgusting liars and he always washed his hands after touching their pictures.

Why had they applied for the position? Couldn’t the Culls read? His instructions, sixty-seven words drafted over three weeks, had been exceptionally precise.

Centering the table was a smaller stack of photos, the Potentials. Chests broad and pink. Hillocks of bicep, globes of shoulder. Stomachs flat as skimboards. But all had minor flaws: a strident navel, or puckered nipples. One had distractingly large hands. The Potentials were second-stringers on the sideline benches, there if needed, but hopefully kept from the field.

He swiped his hands on his khakis to blot sweat and reached for the closest stack of photos. There were five in all: the Absolutes, the chosen ones. From the seventy-seven photos he’d received, five had survived the most intense scrutiny. He arrayed the Absolutes before him like supplicants and studied them from chin to kneecaps.

Until the sound started up in his head.

Not again, please not again….

He sat back and pushed his palms against his ears. She’d started singing in the next room. He knew she wasn’t physically there, but the woman sang across time and between dimensions if she wanted. He hummed loudly to blunt her song, but it made her sing louder. The only way to stop her singing was push his pants past his knees and do that thing, his buttocks squeaking against the cupped plastic chair until down there made nasty business across the underside of the table and the floor.

It took two minutes to make her shut up. He refastened his pants in blessed silence, then spent five minutes at the sink attending to his hands: hot water, soap up to the elbows, scrub with the brush, rinse, repeat. Dry his hands with a fresh towel, toss it in the hamper.

He returned to the table and picked up a photo from the Absolutes. The pictured man stood grinning and naked against a cream-colored wall, hips cocked forward, the male-fruit displayed shamelessly for the camera. The man had a smile like actors grow, white as snow and lacking only a glint of light flashing from an incisor. He’d flashed the bright smile in the park when they met.

The man at the table picked up the scissors. Carefully aligning blades and photo, he snipped, and the head tumbled to the floor. He retrieved the scrap, tore it into dime-sized pieces, and brushed it from his hands into the toilet. The last piece sucked down the whirlpool was the white smile.

The man cocked his head and listened for her song, but she seemed to be resting. Gathering strength, probably; time was growing short. He’d been exceptionally careful, but she surely sensed he was closing in. He returned to the table, picked up the magnifying glass, and studied the men in the remaining photos—knee to chin, chin to knee—over and over, until he knew his choice was right.

“Quart of whores,” Harry said, “Rats back Rats back Rats back Rats back Rats Rats Rats Rats.” He scribbled aimlessly on his pad, then tore off the top sheet, crumpled it, and flicked it to the growing pile of paper balls in the center of the round table. The tables in Flanagan’s were too small for brainstorming, I thought. The lights too low. The noise level too high. The floor too wooden. Everything irritated me when the thoughts wouldn’t come.

“Eight rats,” I said, exasperated. “Four with backs.”

Harry doodled on his fresh page. “Ate rats? A-T-E?”

I thought about it. Shrugged. Nothing clicked.

“Rats anagrams to ‘star,’” Harry continued, drawing stars. “Eight stars, four stars times two, four-star restaurant, four-star meal, twice as good?”

I dry-washed my face. “Who in the hell warped the whores?”

The third round arrived. Eloise Simpkins picked up the dead soldiers, glanced at my pad, winced. I’d sketched a large rat.

“Yuck,” she said, wrinkling her nose, ratlike.

I craned my neck, stretching. Medium crowd at Flanagan’s, twenty-five or so, about half cops. Most were at the bar or tables near it. Harry and I’d sat up front where we could pull the curtain and look outside for inspiration. I opened the curtain. Rain in such solid vertical lines it could have been falling up. Four lanes of canal with a street beneath it, an occasional car splashing by. Across the way a chiropractor’s office, pawn shop, and boarded-up dollar store. A styrofoam fast-food carton rafted down the gutter. I closed the curtain.

“Zodiac,” Harry said. “Eight stars. Isn’t there a constellation or something—”

“The Pleiedes,” I said. “Seven stars, seven sisters.”

“Why couldn’t they have been the eight rats?” Harry produced another ball of paper and rolled it to the center. I saw gator boots moving to the table and looked up to see Bill Cantwell, a ranking detective in Second District. Cantwell was a lanky forty-fiveish former Texan who expressed his birthright through stovepipe jeans, ornate shirts, and tipped-forward Stetsons. Cantwell noticed my rat sketch, made a frame with his fingers, and pretended to study Harry. “That’s good, Carson,” he deadpanned. “A touch more mustache and you’d have him dead-on.”

“Another Steinberg,” Harry moaned.

“Seinfeld,” I corrected. Harry had one TV, a ten-inch black and white. He was a music man.

“I hear y’all might be handling this Nelson thing under Piss-it rules,” Cantwell said, propping a silver-pointed boot on a chair beside Harry. “Tell me again what Piss-it stands for, Harry. I ain’t looking through that damn manual, thing weighs ten pounds.”

“Psychopathological and Sociopathological Investigative Team, Bill,” Harry said. “Piss-it’s a lot easier to remember.”

Tomorrow Harry and I were meeting second district’s homicide dicks about canvassing Nelson’s neighborhood and checking the haunts he favored. They were, in fact, already doing it, since the killing had occurred in their territory. But under PSIT procedures information had to be routed past Harry and me, since we were the sole members of the team.

Cantwell nodded slowly. “I guess it makes sense Piss-it handles things. The case’s got crazy writ all over it, a chopped-off head and writing by the peter. There’ll be some grumbling from the guys, it’ll mean extra paperwork. But we’ll be fine with it, even if Squill ain’t.”

“What you mean, Bill?” Harry said. “Squill ain’t?”

“He was in this afternoon making noises, y’know. Like we didn’t have to be real cooperative if we didn’t want.” Cantwell scratched at an incisor and flicked something unwanted to the floor. “I got the notion ol’ Captain Squill ain’t real fond of Piss-it.”

Harry raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t worry, Harry; we’ll be going by Piss-it procedures. We’re in till we hear otherwise.”

Cantwell rapped the table with his knuckles and drifted back to his group. I looked at Harry. “Why is Squill sticking his finger in our eyes?”

Harry shrugged. “It’s Squill. We have eyes and he has fingers.”

When there was more crumpled paper than room to work, we called it a night, heading outside as Burlew was coming in, his gray raincoat a sodden tent. Harry was already on the street and Burlew and I passed in the narrow vestibule between outside and inside doors. I nodded and gave him room, but he took a sidestep stumble and shouldered me into the wall. I turned to see if he was drunk, but he’d already passed into Flanagan’s, chewing his wad of paper, a tight smile at the edges of his doll-baby mouth.

The next morning we were summoned to Squill’s office. He was on the phone and ignored us. We sat in hard chairs before his uncluttered desk and studied his ego wall. If any political or law-enforcement celebrity had passed within three states, Squill’d been there with hand out and teeth shining. After five minutes of listening and grunting, Squill hung up his phone and spun his chair to look out the window, his back to our faces.

“Tell me about the Nelson case,” he commanded the sky.

“Indeterminate,” I said. “Yesterday we talked with his aunt, Billie Messer—”

“I’m talking to the ranking detective, Ryder. In this office you wait your turn.”

I felt my face flush with anger and my fists ball involuntarily. Squill said, “I’ll try again. What’s happening on the Nelson case?”

Harry looked at me, rolled his eyes, and addressed the back of Squill’s head.

“We talked with his aunt, Billie Messer, plus some other folks. They confirm the lowlife lifestyle indicated on Nelson’s rap sheet. He used people. We interviewed a former girlfriend, the one who filed the charges. She’s a confused woman who still has tender feelings for Nelson, but basically said the same. Today we’re meeting with the D-Two homicide dicks to set up a mechanism to review the—”

Squill spun to face us. “No,” he said, “you’re not.”

Harry said, “Pardon me, Captain?”

“You’re not doing anything. I’ve spoken with the chief and he agrees this isn’t a psycho case. It stinks of fag revenge killing. We’re dumping the file back to Second District. Your involvement in the Nelson case is officially over.”

I braced my hands on my knees and leaned forward. “What if it’s not vengeance, but the start of a killing spree?”

“I’m not talking to listen to myself. Dismissed.”

“It doesn’t fit a vengeance pattern. Here’s what I’m—”

“Did you hear me?”

“Let me finish, Captain. We don’t yet have enough information to decide whether or not this is—”

Squill spun back to the window. He said, “Get him out of here, Nautilus, I’ve got work to do.”

I was shaking my head before we hit the hall. “That didn’t make sense. Why pull us before we’ve done an overview? We don’t have the info to decide either way if this is PSIT status. What’s buzzing in his shorts?”

Harry said, “I got some fresh milk this morning.”

“Spill it.”

“Remember the rumor Chief Hyrum is retiring next year?”

“Thumping and bumping, you said.”

Harry sighed. “I’d never have said that, it doesn’t fit. I said rolling and strolling. Only it’s not next summer, it’s this September.”

I said, “Two months away. The hatchet jobs have to be done in double time?”

Harry nodded. “Pop an umbrella; the blood’s gonna fly.”

“That doesn’t concern us, remember? You told me that.”

“The only constant is change, bro, you told me that. There’s two deputy chiefs tussling for the job of Big Chief: Belvidere and Plackett. Squill’s hitched his wagon to Plackett’s star, been buttering his biscuits for years. If the commission recommends Plackett for chief, guess who he’ll slip in as a deputy chief?”

My stomach churned. “Squill?”

Harry slapped my back. “Now you’re seeing the big picture, Carson. Like Squill, Plackett’s more politico than cop. Guy couldn’t find his ass with a mirror and tongs, but he knows how to work the newsies; Squill gave him pointers about sound bites, eye contact, spinning a story. On the other hand, Belvidere’s a cop. Knows his shit, but has a personality like instant potatoes. A lot of little things add up in the police commission’s selection process, but remember who floated the idea of the PSIT…”

“Belvidere,” I said. “Plackett opposed it.”

“Probably at Squill’s advice,” Harry said. “Push it.”

“If we do good, it makes Belvidere look good, which steals thunder from Plackett, which works to Squill’s disfavor?”

“Hocused and pocused,” Harry said. “Now try and focus.”

I rolled my eyes. “C’mon, Harry, try it in English.”

“Look hard. Take it one more step.”

I focused. “In the best of all possible worlds to Squill, the entire concept of PSIT would be floating facedown in the Mobile River?”

We passed Linette Bowling, Squill’s charmless, donkey-faced administrative assistant. Harry snatched a fistful of droopy flowers from a vase on her desk and handed them to me.

“You’re beautiful when you finally get the picture, Carson.”

“Nautilus, you asshole,” Linette brayed from behind us, “gimme back my fuckin’ flowers.”