Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery (6 page)

I know what I should have done. In my head, it was an entirely simple decision. Watch the taillights disappear. Just give the dude time to disappear and then call the cops. That’s all you’ve got to do, son.

Sad thing was, I wasn’t even in the mood for piling onto my misery. I just wanted to get the hell on with my life and forget about this shit, but there was something that wouldn’t quite untether me from the situation. Bullish stupidity is my cross to bear, I suppose.

I’d suffered enough, or should have, even if I’d brought most of it onto myself. The temptation to be a fuck-up should have been easy to deny.
No, no, I’ve had my fill of that for a while, but thanks
. I’d peeked behind the curtain of my unquestionably grim future, so I should have been able to swear off risk, but I guess Hephaestus is a distant relative of mine. I’ve dutifully created the tools of my destruction.

Sitting there, truck idling, watching the taillights become smaller, I had a choice. One voice was sound and calm, telling me to let it go. Chasing dangerous rednecks down a curvy patch of highway would only result in trouble, I knew that. And yet, somehow, there was a second, equally convincing voice, speaking in whispers about the discarded body I had found.

Then a phrase came to me, one that was both beautiful and dangerous, one that had gotten me halfway to this point.

“Aww, fuck it,” I said.

I stomped the gas pedal on my aging Ford. What the other guy probably didn't know was, I'd put a low enough gear in the transmission that, completely wound out, it could top off at a hundred and fifteen, easy. Most modern vehicles have a switch that cuts the engine off at a flat hundred, and you have to get a chip override to disable that feature. Most people don’t go that far, and I hoped this guy was no different.

Once I got up to speed, trees and road reflectors passed in a near-psychedelic blur. With no guiding moon and me outrunning the headlights, it was tantamount to driving with my eyes closed. I focused on the electric red rectangles, hoping I hadn’t forgotten about some hairpin curve ahead of me.

As a police officer, I'd been involved in innocuous chases with people who found jail much more terrifying than running - or going through a windshield - but drunks and other common criminals will often have a moment of clarity and pull over. This fool had no intention of slowing down. The car veered dangerously on the country roads. One bad yank on the wheel, and the truck would go rolling across the landscape like a skier missing a jump.

However, the diesel on that lead truck, a V8 GMC behemoth, could get up and go a sight better than I thought. In fact, the thing could flat-out
scoot
, but I managed to keep up. It topped a steep hill, and I accelerated through the next curve to make up ground.

Over another hill, a reflection caught my eye, and for a moment I thought I saw a deer's eyes. They weren't out this time of year, not like in the fall, but they could be found here and there, and so it still got a reaction out of me. Hitting an animal that size at this speed would be catastrophic. I’d seen men tossed through windows or impaled on horns.

I backed off, let the truck take a sizable lead. It dawned on me how crazy I was acting. I had the tag number memorized; all it would take was a single phone call.

When I passed the reflection, I saw it wasn’t eyes at all but the text on the door of a Lumber Junction police cruiser, and I blew right past it.

The lights went on immediately, and he pulled out behind me. Apart from the fact that I was speeding, I had been drinking, as well. Good a lawyer as Jarrell was, there was no way he could get me out of this. Topping a hundred in the truck after a shot and a couple of beers meant at least - at least - a few months in lock-up.

You know: to think things over.

The tail of something sinister was winding around me, and I somehow knew that struggling against it would only secure misfortune more tightly to me.

But still, I knew I would struggle, hoping to find the way free.

I punched the gas and was quickly up over a hundred again. That cop had set up shop out here because it was a great place to catch speeders, but he didn't realize that I knew the very routes he didn't expect me to take.

If it had only taken me a second to memorize the truck’s tag, then the officer behind me would only need moments to do the same. Rather than swerve, however, I tried to get as much distance between myself and his car as I could, as quickly as possible.

A little sharp edge was working its way through my brain - about the whole situation, really - but I had no time to contemplate it. Not until I was out of the situation and back to safety.

Getting taken in meant the end of my little investigation, which would go cold and shrink to a near-invisible size without my help.

Then a solution presented itself. If, that was, I didn’t kill myself trying to make it happen.

I rounded a sharp corner, the weight of the truck threatening to spin it out, but I kept the tires on the asphalt and made a hard turn down a dirt road.

The backside tires slid, and though the front end managed to hold, I couldn’t keep the goddamn thing from fishtailing. Both sides of the road were surrounded by trees, and I slid into one pretty good with my rear quarter panel. I sort of bounced off and righted the truck before I went headlong into the row of trees on the other side.

I killed the headlights and coasted to a stop as the cruiser sped past on the main highway, its own lights creating a symphony in the gaps between trees. I listened intently. If he saw me, I was a goner. No way I'd be able to get past him on this dirt road.

But he didn't. He went on by, and both the lights and the sirens disappeared down the highway. I hoped he hadn't gotten
my
tag number. I guess I would know the next time I went into town, because they’d be looking for a reason to bring me in.

I spent the drive home wondering about the chase. No way the cruiser hadn’t seen the truck, too, so why flip on the lights just for me? In whose pocket was the PD? They couldn’t necessarily know the junker I was driving, but what really mattered was that, on sight, the cop had ignored that truck. Something to look into later.

The questions plagued me well into the night, until consciousness melted away and my waking life could not be distinguished from my dreams. Several times I was arrested and taken away, charged with murder, and several times I awakened in a cold sweat. Shadowy figures slipped in and out of the bedroom. The floorboards creaked and I reached blindly for my .45. Bad habit to start.

At one point, I dreamed of a girl with an electrified hand, from which giant bolts of blue light emerged and burned her surroundings. She was a pretty stranger, but a stranger nonetheless. She was clad in a bright red get-up - red jacket, boots, and belt - and wore an eyepatch that appeared and disappeared in the dream, depending on what my mind was projecting.

It wasn’t my ex-wife, but I had a feeling of kinship with the woman, of knowing her in some fundamental way, even if I had never seen her before. Strange.

It wasn't until a light rain began to rattle on the roof that I finally managed to get some real sleep. I dreamed about Kaiju-sized trucks trying to run me over.

Fourth Chapter

Most nights, I toss and turn and blink awake in the dark with the wispy remnants of absurd events playing out in my head, tormenting me until I’ve had my coffee. It leveled off a bit when I quit driving a rig several years ago, but I still don't think I've slept through a night without snapping awake since I was a little boy, and probably not even then.

I guess I’ve seen some fucked-up things, but most everybody has that one vision that keeps them up when they’re feeling vulnerable. Or maybe not, and that’s just another fucked-up thing about me.

Maybe I never got over my shit the way other people do, all of the adolescent anger and frustration of a middling trajectory. It’s probably why I also still let my mouth get the best of me.

Still, sleeping was easier when Vanessa and I were together. Her presence seemed to ward off whatever malaise plagued me. Sometimes I called her my talisman, and though she stopped smiling at that joke, I was never able to stop using it.

Anyway, so I can’t sleep well. People leave. I see weird shit sometimes. A great scholar once said “get busy living or get busy dying,” and I’m under the impression that just means exist. Get up. Go do your thing. Don’t let the snares keep you from moving forward. Might just turn your clothes to tatters and your skin to shredded pork, but don’t slow down.

That’s when whatever’s behind you catches up.

*  *  *

There were enough grounds in the can to make a single, big cup of coffee, and I drank it slowly during SportsCenter. The Braves looked good out of the gate, but how long the pitching would hold up was a mystery. We didn’t have a Maddux or a Smoltz on this year’s roster, but maybe we had a couple of half-Smoltzes, so I imagined we’d end up losing to somebody in the playoffs in the fall.

I called the police station, and pleaded to speak with D.L. again. Dara popped her gum in my ear but did what I’d asked. I gave him the plate number of the truck that had followed me, and he received it without too much prodding. “I hope you’re not doing anything underhanded,” he said, before hanging up.

I heard the beginnings of concern in his voice, and I couldn’t tell where he was placing it.

D.L. had made police work a career, but he knew he was just as much a politician as anybody else, and if there’s one thing politicians know, it’s staying in politics.

But I also knew that he liked me enough to let me out on a long leash, so that would give me the cover I wanted for awhile, so long as I didn’t embarrass the old man in public. That would be one step too far, and even being the martyr in a doomed relationship with his troubled daughter wouldn’t spare me a boot in the ass then.

Still, it gave me enough leeway to continue on with this mad compulsion of mine.

Whenever I was done contemplating what I might be doing to D.L. by deceiving him, I read this week’s paper. The article in the
Junction Examiner
spared the case’s more grisly details, but not out of respect for the family or anything. It had been penned by a troglodyte on the staff, one zombie-walking from check to check on a sparse path toward retirement.

And why worry? It was only a local paper in a dying industry with a weekly circulation of hundreds.

Maybe hundreds.

The publisher, Wilson Talmadge. could find a backbone whenever the paper needed a pulse but was utterly willing to compromise on just about every other aspect of the business, in every other moment of his life.

But hell, the paper was still in business. That was at least something.

The byline for this piece of “journalism” wasn’t attributed to Doris Allworth, the only person who seemed to possess any sense of integrity at the
Examiner
, which was perhaps why the article didn’t even mention the name Brickmeyer.

It managed to mention calling me a fall-down drunk, but I imagined that took some amount of restraint to do that. “Former police officer Rolson McKane” said all it needed to say, however. I filed it all away for later and then went about my day.

A detective named Ed Hunter arrived at ten, and when I first saw him, my heart dropped into my bowels. He didn't seem to know anything about last night. I had never met him and found him about as likable as a toothache. He stood six-four and kept his arms perpetually intertwined across his chest. His blue eyes flickered with what I could only interpret as contempt, for what reason I wasn't able to say. I joked that I could share a half-sized cup of coffee with him but that I didn’t have enough for two people, especially one as big as him. He seemed okay with that joke. We made small talk, about the Braves and weather, but after ten minutes I realized he wasn't leaving until he had something to work with.

"What were you doing out at that old shack, Mr. McKane?" he asked. He didn't have a pen or paper handy, but he didn’t needed it. He had these knife blades for eyes, and he stared holes right into me. Truth be told, it made me uncomfortable to look at the man.

But I did. I’m too goddamn stubborn to quail from anybody.

I stared right back at him, steepling my fingers in my lap and cracking the knuckles. I wasn’t going to tell the honest truth - the
truth
truth - but I also hesitated to lie outright. What was it Mark Twain once said, "Always tell the truth and you never have to remember anything?"

"I like to go for walks, Mr. Hunter," I said. "If you looked it up, you'd see I got a citation for driving under the influence a couple weeks back. Big mess. Hit somebody with my car and everything. So instead of driving, which is frowned on with me awaiting a court date, I like to walk. I ended up over on the Brickmeyer land because I was bored and tired of trekking up and down the same stretch of pavement."

"Rain for the last two days, making a damn fine mess of the earth round here, and you decide to go for a walk. Uh-huh," he said. He pretended to scratch his chin. "Mile-and-a-half into the woods, no less. What's it like to go through all that straw and mud? You do that for fun?"

"If the occasion calls for it. Listen,” I said. “I have absolutely no problem answering questions. Shit, you want, you can prop your feet up and we can get cozy. But I will not have you patronizing me in my own house. I'm the guy who found the body, that’s all. That is it."

His ragged smile was meant, I'm sure, to be conciliatory, but it gave off an entirely different vibe. He was enjoying this. "Didn't mean anything by it. Just getting a picture of the situation and the circumstances surrounding your 'discovery'. If I come off as abrasive, it's only because I thought you would understand. It's the routine, you know. Cop stuff."

At that, I did see his expression soften somewhat. Maybe he saw the truth somewhere in what I was saying. Maybe, but if not, he was good at putting on a show.

"Oh yeah," I said. "Well, I'm no longer with the force, so."

"I understand, I really do. Man’s always got to find his way, and sometimes it takes him through the briars before it lands him on the highway, if it ever does."

“You been through the briars much in your life, detective?”

A twitch of the eye, slight upturn of the mouth. He’d winced. “I reckon you could say that. Youth can be a troubled time. I’ve outgrown most of what I presume you’re still working through.”

“I’ll be working off whatever debt I’ve got for the rest of my life. Somebody up there likes keeping me chained to the grindstone.”

“I see,” he replied.

The coffee tasted like cold mud, but I drank it with a measured calm while I contemplated my next series of answers. Hunter played it even cooler. What freaked me out was, during the whole conversation, his eyes never left me, not once. You can get used to people staring at you, you have enough of them doing it, but for those long periods of time like that, it's just unsettling.

At the end of a bitter gulp of coffee, I said, "What has Leland contributed to the investigation? He must be perturbed at a body being discovered on his land."

Hunter sighed. "As could be expected, he has been courteous to us so far. Inviting, even. He's a politician, after all."

"That's good." I kept my tone even, like a criminal trying to outwit a lie detector test.

"But I can tell you from our preliminary information that he's not a suspect. Having a body found on your land doesn't necessarily make you guilty of anything but being able to afford that much property, a crime I wished I was guilty of sometimes."

"Ain't that the truth."

"Ain't it? Anyway, he's been answering questions, all that. He's a friend of law enforcement." I couldn't tell if he was serious. Sure, Brickmeyer paid lip service, threw a banquet every now and then, but didn't this dude realize it was for show?

"The same way Mother Teresa was a friend to poverty."

Hunter gave me a quizzical smile but didn't respond. "And, we got a fabric sample off the body. Didn't come from the decedent, so we're taking a look at it."

“That all the evidence you get?”

“The crime scene was compromised,” he replied. “Small town law enforcement got a little too excited, I suppose. Trying to play the CSI guys on television. Plus, the rain...”

“Gonna be a wet spring,” I said. “Tends to wash everything away. Has he given you any trouble? Said anything strange? Brickmeyer, I mean?”

He said, "It would be contradictory for him to do anything but walk the line, and he knows that. He's an astute public figure."

"You could say that again."

“Do you have a hard-on for this guy or something?”

I realized I might have been pushing a little hard. “Getting a sense of all the angles, is all.”

"Well, he knows a slip-up right now might cost him down the line. If he plays ball and the right man gets apprehended, he'll come out smelling like a rose. And if he doesn't, if he decides to flex his muscle a little too much, if he tries to be impetuous--"

"Instead of a rose, he'll be a turd blossom."

"Exactly."

"May I ask why a more-than-local interest has been taken in this case? Doesn't seem like something the bigger fish would want to bite on."

Hunter wiped at his mouth with one hand like he had mayo or something on it. "There has been a concerted effort on the part of many state governments to, I don't know, right the wrongs of the past."

I was momentarily surprised. "Something like reparations?"

"Nothing like that. Wouldn't fly with a Republican voter base. No, what has happened is that task forces have been created to investigate hate crimes committed during the fifties and sixties."

"Wow."

"It's a workload, but real progress has been made. If an unsolved homicide involved race, then we're taking a look at it."

"What does that have to do with this situation?"

"Well, it's a sensitive time, what with the political climate and all. This case falls into that very same area. If it turns out that there was some racial motivation for the murder and we're able to solve it, then that will bring positive attention to the cause. It's a win-win, politically."

“You don’t seem like the kind of man who would do something for its political implications.”

“Depending on how high you get, there’s always a game to be played. Politically, of course.”

"And practically?"

"We’re finding out that many crimes once thought to be racially motivated were actually committed by other people, family members and disgruntled lovers and such. Still, though that doesn't lessen the grief, at least it proves beyond a doubt, in some cases, that simple racism played no part in them."

"Comforting."

"Now see," Hunter said, perhaps taking offense for the first time, "it can't be looked at like that. A crime is not a crime is not a crime. One murder is not just like any other murder."

"Absolutely."

"That is why it's important that the actual cause be determined. Motivation may affect how we look at them from a historical standpoint. It's not a waste of money if it brings closure. The truth is important in these matters. Wouldn't you want the right person to be fingered if you had been killed?"

"That's something I agree with. If the truth really comes out."

Hunter shrugged. "That's always the variable. We can never be sure if the truth will ever come out, let alone when."

“Good luck,” I said. “Hope you find the truth.”

He stood and headed for the door. His eyes never left me, and the sight of them made me want to shudder. "Well, I reckon we'll see, won't we? Take care, Mr. McKane. I'll definitely be in touch."

"Oh, one last thing," he said, stopping at the door. I had stood and was going to close it behind him. "We got an I.D. on that body. Mother came by and identified him late last night. Name is Emmitt Laveau."

I tried not to let on that my blood had gone cold.

"His mother is Janita Laveau."

At this, the detective finally smiled; it looked like a man trying to get into a suit he doesn't wear very often. "You got it, sport. The son of the woman you hit with your car is on a slab right now. Keep that in mind next time you talk to me."