1 Motor City Shakedown (18 page)

SIXTEEN

An ho
ur south of the Mackinac Bridge, Darren pointed out the signs advertising a scenic lookout. Issabella pulled the Buick into a tree-shrouded parking lot and the two of them walked up a winding set of wooden steps that disappeared into the woods. The steps terminated into a large deck set upon a high bluff.

“Wow,” she said when they both came to a stop at the railing.

It seemed that all of Michigan was laid out in front of them, an expanse of endless oak, elm and evergreen, rolling away, vibrant and timeless beneath a slate-gray sky.

Darren stretched and scratched absently at the stubble on his cheek.

“Whole different world isn’t it?” he said.

“I always forget that,” she said. “There’s Detroit and then there’s everywhere else.”

Other drivers had taken the same opportunity to stretch. A family of four loitered on the other end of the big deck. A younger couple stood close to one another and spoke in intimate whispers. Issabella smiled and bumped her hip against Darren’s thigh.

“Hmm?”

“James Klodd,” she said.

Darren’s expression didn’t change, but she could feel a line of tension run the length of him. He kept his eyes in the horizon.

“It’s okay,” she said, suddenly sorry she had broached the subject. He had an open wound, and she had just poked at it. She felt stupid, like she’d ruined a nice moment. But then Darren started talking.

“The cops got an anonymous tip,” he said. “The caller said he thought he’d seen a girl who looked like Shoshanna Green peering through one of the bedroom windows in Jamey Klodd’s house. The cops were at the end of their rope. They had nothing else. So they got a judge to sign a bad warrant.”

Issabella nodded, said “Anonymous phone call doesn’t make probable cause.”

“That’s what my motion said,” Darren sighed.

“Not just your motion. It’s what all our courts say, too.”

“I wrote the motion. Just me.”

She wrapped her arm in his and leaned her head against his shoulder. They were quiet for a long time.

“After the motion succeeded, I was the toast of the town,” he said. “Dinners with other highflyers, offers from big firms. So I’m in my office and my head’s full of all the future possibilities. The phone rings and the read-out says it’s Jamey Klodd. When I pick up the phone and answer, there’s just silence.”

“Weird.”

“I say his name a couple times, but there’s nothing. I’m about to hang up and call him back, like maybe the connection is just screwed up. But then I understood. He was letting me know what I’d done. He was sitting there on the other end of the line, letting the silence tell me that he’d kidnapped that little girl.
He
made that anonymous tip. He made it because he’s clever. He knew the cops were running themselves ragged, and gambled that they’d take the bait. Once they did, all he needed was a lawyer to get the illegal search thrown out of court. And with it, all the evidence they’d found in his house.”

“What evidence?”

“A crayon drawing pinned to his fridge. It was hanging there in the middle of the door all by itself. It was a kid’s drawing of a house and a yard and a sun overhead. And it was almost identical to the one hanging on the fridge in the Greens’ home. No prints or DNA. But a swirly, orange sun and crooked blue grass and a house with red shutters, just like in the one Shoshanna had drawn for her mother a week before she disappeared.”

“Not exactly a magic bullet,” she said.

“It was a damn billboard,” he whispered. “He was advertising he was the one.”

Issabella shook her head, “That’s insane. Why take that risk? He couldn’t be sure that a motion would succeed."

“He’s a malignant narcissist,” Darren said. “He needed the world to know it was him. He needed to show the cops and the court and me that he’d tricked everyone and gotten away with it. A week after that phone call, his house in Ann Arbor burned to the ground and Jamey Klodd vanished. A month after that, the first envelope showed up in my mail. Always mailed from a different state. No prints or DNA or notes. Just my home address and a little girl’s tooth.”

The sun touched the horizon, throwing long shadows. The family of four had wandered back down the winding steps.

Darren took in a slow, deep breath. He looked exhausted.

“Judge Hodgens was the judge assigned to that case,” he said.
“She threw out the warrant. When she found out about the green envelopes, she took it as hard as I did. Maybe harder. We both…I don’t know. Bonded, I guess. She’s a strong person. She got back on her feet, eventually. She soldiered on. I…didn’t.”

Issabella watched him fall silent, and thought about her conversation with Judge Hodgens.

“She’s trying to help you, isn’t she? To get you on your feet again.”

Darren nodded.

“Yeah. It was her idea that I should ease back into cases when I felt ready. I promised her I wouldn’t take anything above a ninety day misdemeanor without a co-counsel. I was a real wreck, Izzy. I agreed and just stayed in my booth. Eventually Eugene Pullins called. You know the rest.”

“You’ll have to forgive yourself,” she said.

Darren managed a faint smile, but he didn’t say anything.

“And maybe stop running your law business out of a bar.”

Darren chuckled.

“And not hold it against me for prying.”

Darren kissed her forehead and turned away from the panorama.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go find Johnny Two Leaf and clear our client’s name.”

*

They stopped a few miles north of the bridge at a roadside motel. The rooms were a row of little individual cedar-shingle bungalows, quaint and inviting among the evening shadows. Darren walked over to the office and paid for a night while Issabella stretched and looked across the two-lane highway at the black expanse of Lake Michigan.

Darren unlocked the bungalow door and they both paused in the entranceway, peering in at the room and its lone bed. They looked at each other and were silent. Finally, Darren put voice to what they were both thinking.

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he said. “I mean, I don’t want to assume how you feel.”

“That’s such a right thing to say.”

“It has the benefit of being true.
We haven’t really talked about…”

“So tell me,” she said, and set her overnight bag on the floor.

“Tell you what?”

“I’m not in high school,” she said, and favored him with a gentle smile. She put her hand on his arm. “But you’re right, I’d like to maybe hear you tell me how you feel.”

Darren nodded and was quiet for a second. Then he looked at her, took a long breath in through his nose and seemed to steady himself.

“I’m crazy about you,” he said. “Right away, I was. In the hospital, I mean. I’m crazy about you and I don’t want to do anything to scare you off. I don’t want to screw up working with you or being able to be your friend.”

Issabella watched him as he spoke; saw the earnest concern on his face. He was standing there, with his mop of curls and his large, expressive eyes, and she saw who he must have been as a boy—full of unguarded enthusiasm and big, confounding emotions. Life had changed him the same way it changes every child, so that now the enthusiasm was guarded, the emotions protected against betrayal or rejection.

For the first time since they’d met outside Vernon Pullins’ hospital room, Issabella knew with real clarity that she was falling in love with Darren Fletcher. She leaned in and put her head against his chest, letting him envelop her with his arms, holding her. She could feel his heartbeat against her ear.

“You are
so
getting lucky, you know,” she said.

“I was holding out hope for that.”

Darren carried her overnight bag into the room. Issabella watched him as he set the bag on the foot of the bed and leaned over to turn on a desk lamp. She imagined it was their own room, the two of them a couple, familiar with one another and knowing all of each other’s stories. She imagined they had TV shows they watched together, and little bickering exchanges about politics and family.

Darren was frightened of scaring
her
off, and here she was mentally mapping out a sedate future for the two of them. The thought made her giggle in the doorway. Darren looked up, saw her smiling, and beamed at her like she was made of sunshine.

Issabella softly shut the door behind her.

*

Afterwards, they held each other in the darkness and listened to the sounds of the road outside. He used a finger to tuck loose lengths of her hair behind her ear and kissed her neck.

“You never ask me any questions,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“About me.”

“I didn’t want you to think I was unsure about you,” he said, and kissed her neck again.

“Why
weren’t
you unsure about me? I’m unsure about me. All the time.”

A car pulled into the parking lot, crunching gravel, and its headlights swam like a spot light across their window. She saw his hand resting lightly across her own, his fingers curled into hers, and then darkness again.

“You had the same crazy idea as me,” he said. “You went to that hospital. You got rebuffed by that cop, and you still stuck with it.”

“And promptly had a panic attack.”

Darren squeezed her hand.

“You were just in a bad spot,” he said.
“I know what that’s like. Life can seem like it conspires against you, sometimes.”

“Darren?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you rich?”

He was quiet for a while.

“Kind of, yeah.”

“How?”

“I used to be a big deal, Izzy.”

He said it playfully, like it was just another off-handed joke. But the silence that followed made her sad, and she held his arm tighter across her. He kissed her ear.

“You’re still a big deal, Darren.”

“I’m going to try,” he said.

*

When he was half-way through shoveling bricks of heroin and stacks of shrink-wrapped cash from the sunken closet safe and into the duffel bags he’d picked up at the Meijer’s in Midland, Allen felt someone watching him.

The sun had already fallen, and he had a black Mag-lite stuck in between his teeth, illuminating the safe and its dwindling contents. Around him, the Midland woods were hushed in that hour between dusk and true night, when the nocturnal creatures who call the wilds home aren’t yet moving about or calling to one another, and the world seems empty.

But now there was some other. Allen was not alone.

He dropped the flashlight into his palm, pivoting in a circle around the little clearing where, two years ago, he and Lee and Noel had buried the safe and sworn to each other that none of them would ever open it without the other two present. It was their treasure-trove, and they had planned to split it when the time was right, when there was so much accumulated wealth that the three could go their separate ways into lives of eternal sunshine, umbrella drinks and bronze-skinned girls.

He straightened and, in the same motion, slipped the Glock from its waist holster and held it against his thigh. He clicked the flashlight off and took several silent steps backwards, away from the spot where he had been crouched. If someone really was in the woods with him, the flashlight was just an invitation to get shot in the head.

Allen squatted down again, this time on one knee. He kept the Glock held lightly at his side, his eyes scanning the darkness. He remained frozen like that for a long time, no urge to shift or move ever reaching his mind. He could wait, and he could do it all night if that’s what it took to convince him he was alone.

Eventually, the sounds of the local wild life chirped and cried and swelled through the woods. All around, those insects and birds that prattled and sang to one another assured Allen that if there
was
some other human moving through their home, they certainly weren’t aware of it.

Another hour passed, and Allen’s thighs began to burn with the effort of remaining in the same position. The sudden unease he had felt had long since passed. But he stayed where he was.

Allen was not a man who would ever forget the hard lessons of the desert. Whoever moved first, died. Whoever decided they had to piss, or take a drink, or just shift to relieve boredom—they were the ones who didn’t hear the distant crack of thunder until they were already on their back and staring at a sky growing dim.

Allen waited.

*

Malcolm was a statue. Mosquitoes sank their needles into the backs of his hands. Something with flittering wings shambled around his ear, lit on his cheek and skittered along the side of his face.