Cooler Than Blood (14 page)

“She didn’t know anything else about it,” Zach said. “She said he mentioned something about money, but she wasn’t listening.”

“What’s your dream, little man?” Randall asked. “Knock her up with your pygmy stick and waltz her down the aisle?”

“You can go—”

Garrett took a step forward. “Enough.”

I made a note to call Rutledge and let him know Jenny might have left something out of the interview. It wouldn’t be unusual, which is why multiple interviews are preferred. Often the story changes, or the witness—in this case Jenny—simply can’t recall with certainty what happened or what was said. Memory, after all, is largely fiction.

“What were you birdbrains thinking?” I asked Randall. “She could finger you and Zach for kidnapping.”

“She never knew we was brothers and never saw me,” Randall said. “I kept a mask on. We figured she’d never press charges against Zach. Isn’t that what you said, Zach? That you could charm her out of running to the cops? That she’d never do anything to put you in the big house?”

Zach brought his knees up in front of him, wrapped his arms around them, and clamped them in front. “Like she wouldn’t know your voice if she heard you later? You were just too chickenshit to show your sorry face.”

“That ain’t chickenshit, Curly. That’s being smart.” Randall turned to me. “We eventually would’ve let her go.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Garrett said.

“Well, we’ll just never know, will we?” Randall shot back. I was growing impatient with the remaining Coleman brothers. Were these the best criminals we could come up with? This was our best effort? Talk about American competiveness. No wonder the Mexicans and Columbians own the drug trade.

I took two steps toward Zach, got on my knees, and stuck my face in his. “When did she disappear?”

Our eyes locked. On a good day, Mrs. Coleman might have had one son she could be proud of. “Last twenty-four hours. They called us down to Tampa yesterday to try to smooth things over. We stayed and partied a night, and when we came back, our place was trashed. We figured they searched the house for cash and then took her.”

“Who has her, Zach?”

“I dunno.”

“She’s suffering, Zach. And you did this to her.”

He whimpered.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Randall said.

Zach blew out some air, and his shoulders settled. “You got to believe me, man. I’m not sure. Randall had told them that we had her and that she knew about the money but didn’t have it. If we didn’t have her, they would have come after us. But the fact that we took her reinforced to them that we didn’t have the money—that we too were looking for it. You gotta realize, man, we figured they was looking at us like we double-crossed them.”

“I don’t get it,” I interjected. “Did you give her up?”

“No. No, nothing like that,” Zach said as he regained his composure and straightened his back. “Like I said, we’d told them that we had her. We wanted more time with—”

“Had they been here before?”

“Yeah. Yeah, and that’s just it, man. We had some of them up here a few months ago. You know, trying to get to know who we were doing business with.”

“And you think they got impatient and came after her?”

“What else? They call us down for a night and then slip up here and grab her. We figured they either thought we cut them out and took her as a cover—proof that we didn’t take the cash—or she had it. Randall figured better her than us. No one believed me when I said neither Jenny or us had the money. Then Randall told them she was a runaway to start with.” He shot his brother a look. It was the first time he’d broken eye contact with me since I’d gotten on my knees. “Ain’t that right, Randall?” I got up and marched over to Randall. Zach’s voice came from behind me. “They said when we was done with her, they had a whole line of operations that needed homeless girls to staff. But Jenny wasn’t like that. I told them she—”

“You told them she was a runaway?” I was two feet from Randall.

“Teenage bait, man. Chicks like her can—”

My punch caught him square in the jaw and stung my hand. Randall Coleman wasn’t worth cracking my knuckles over. I stepped back and was preparing a high kick when he tumbled over from the force of my punch. I kicked him in the stomach. I was bringing my foot back when Garrett’s hands grabbed my shoulders and jerked me back.

“I will ride a broom up your ass and pin you to the moon if any harm comes to that girl,” I said, glaring down at Randall. I turned to Zach. “Tell me everything about your Tampa connection.”

He gave a club address in downtown St. Pete and the physical description of two men. Randall, in an extra-inning effort to raise his standing, added a few details to Zach’s story. We gave them our plan and left fifteen minutes later, after Zach reached into the back of a blue van and handed me what I wanted. We rendezvoused with PC and Boyd and told them to head home. Garrett and I settled in for our second trip back to the island that day. I was beat.

“Think the Colemans spilled it straight?” he asked.

“Zach, maybe. Wouldn’t bet alongside Randall.”

“Their Tampa partners got anxious and decided to grab her themselves and see what they could find out.” He let it out as a declarative review.

“That might be their play. If nothing else, they get a runaway to feed into their system. Meanwhile, neither party trusts the other, and they hold Jenny in hopes that she can lead them to the money. But we’ve got another issue.”

“Zach’s call to Jenny.”

“Rutledge should have known about that,” I said. “He would have seen it on her cell.”

“McGlashan said there was nothing of interest on it. Either Rutledge didn’t bother to check, or McGlashan isn’t being straight with you.”

“Let’s find out.”

I took out Rutledge’s card and hit his numbers. He picked up on the third ring. I let him know that Jenny, depending on how reliable the Colemans’ information was, may have mentioned that Billy Ray had a car stuffed with cash. He cursed and quickly recovered. “She certainly never mentioned it to me,” he said then accelerated his tempo. “That’s why we conduct follow-up interviews. Maybe she would have mentioned it the second time around, or maybe not. She’d been through a lot that night, despite her ulterior coolness. After an experience like she had, it can be very difficult to recall exactly what transpired.”

“But,” I said as I gunned past a yellow Ford Explorer with a dent in the driver’s door and cigarette smoke trailing out of a cracked window, “someone going for the money
would
explain why no prints were found on the car.”

“Perhaps. Keep me posted.”

“Zach said he called her. You found nothing on her phone?”

“Jenny’s?”

“We working another case together?”

“
We
are not doing anything together,” Rutledge said.

“You checked her phone, right?”

“What about it?”

“Zach Coleman said he called Jenny to lure her out of her house. His number would be on her phone under recent calls.” Actually, Randall spilled that bit of information, but Zach didn’t deny it.

“And we would have seen it,” he shot back. “Nothing there but a dump truck load of texts, none of which have anything to do with her disappearance. Come by and look if you want to burn time, but it’s clean.”

“Why would Zach tell me that?”

“Hell, I don’t know, Travis. Why don’t you ask the meth dealer himself? If I kidnapped someone, my story would also be that I called and that they came voluntarily. Take a look at Zach Coleman’s phone. You ain’t going find what you’re looking for.”

I decided that how Zach had lured Jenny out of the house was of little meaning. Rutledge and I disconnected. Something about his reply had struck me as odd, but I couldn’t recall what it was; the thought hit my mind but never took hold. I placed my phone on the center console on top of Jenny’s T-shirt, which is what Zach had handed me from the back of their van. I considered turning some music on, but all I did was count crosses on the side of the road.

CHAPTER 23

I
had been up since predawn, had spent eight hours yo-yoing up and down the interstate, and was eagerly anticipating a good night’s sleep. Not that I have much experience in that area.

At the peak of the bridge, the pink hotel looked like it was in a snow globe as it radiated against the black Gulf. Kathleen had called and said she was at my house, since she wanted to read Maugham in the morning at the end of my dock. That girl was on a mission.

I parked in my driveway. The truck barely fit in the garage and left no room for my drop-down punching bag with the pink, smiling face. Garrett split next door to Morgan’s. Before I entered, I tossed a shredded gecko into the trash that Hadley III had left for me next to my running shoes. One morning I had put my foot in a shoe only to find she had deposited a present. The half-living lizard had crawled into the toe of the shoe. I now check my shoes before I run. Minor adjustments are necessary to cohabitate with a feline hunter.

Kathleen stood in front of the Magnavox with a Bobby Darin album in her hand. I focus on vertical collections and had just completed Bobby Darin’s covers. Darin—who, at age thirty-two, discovered that his parents were really his grandparents and that his sister was actually his mother—was also a chess nut. His cover of Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter” works for me every time. That neither Darin nor Hardin lived to see forty is one of those things I wish I didn’t know.

It wasn’t Darin’s voice in the room, but Nat King Cole’s.

“I’m trying to decide what to put on next,” Kathleen said as a greeting. She showed me the Darin album. “Is this the latest one you bought?”

It had been a long day. I was too tired for words, and life is too short for sleep. I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. She lobbed a few questions, but when she realized conversation wasn’t on the menu, she gave into the moment. Afterward, we lay beside each other as Cole’s smooth, wide voice, coupled with Johnny Mercer’s classic lyrics, forever married a song with a season that Florida would never know.

We lay facing each other, our heads resting on propped elbows. Our standard postcoital
position. “Tell me, stranger,” she said as she ran a finger along the scar on my left shoulder, “have we met before?”

“Autumn in London. Disraeli had just been elected prime minister. Across the fields of Kensington Gardens, I saw you high on your white stallion. I—”

“No Great War poetry tonight?”

“I’m going further back.”

“Do you think things were better then?”

“No doubt. I always thought”—I took her finger off my shoulder and laced her fingers with mine—“that I’d be a sucker for a hearty nineteenth-century girl. A plumb maiden who never saw a dentist, applied skin cream; who couldn’t imagine daily hot showers or a life with—”

“Antibiotics,” Kathleen cut in.

I brought our hands up and graced the edge of her smile with my finger. “Internet porn,” I said.

“Air conditioning.”

“Internet porn.”

“Smartphones, and you need to move on.”

“Thongs.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“Pizza delivery.”

“Oh, my God. Can we?” She broke away and pushed up on both hands.

“Whatever raises your flag.” I was no longer tired, as my reserve battery had kicked in. I haven’t a clue what its source is.

I grabbed two champagne flutes and filled them two-thirds of the way with Taittinger. She poured herself a soft drink. Thirty minutes later, we sat on the screen porch and opened a box of pepperoni pizza with pimento-stuffed olives that had been delivered to our door. It
is
a wonderful world.

Kathleen lit a solitary candle, and on the bay, the red channel marker blinked. She consumed her first piece without engaging customary civilized chewing techniques. “To what shall we toast?” she asked.

“To Kensington Gardens,” I said, tilting my flute toward hers.

“Kensington Gardens.”

I glanced up again at the red channel marker, and my mind flashed to the drops of blood from my elbow earlier that day. I wondered where Jenny was sleeping that night. I again thought of Kathleen challenging me as to why I risked
us
for causes that had been thrust upon
me
. Without risk, there is quiet desperation. Without risk, we take our songs to the ground. Like schussing down a Colorado slope, you need to relinquish control and momentarily trust your instincts. Push the envelope; trust your cape.

“You there? I said the crust is crispier this time.” Kathleen interrupted my traversing thoughts, and I lost the thread. Something about skiing with a cape, which I’d done before on Mardi Gras, but why was I thinking of Mardi Gras? Whatever. My reserve battery must have been faltering.

“Just staring at the marker.” I reached for another slice. I was glad we’d opted for pepperoni. I’d been falling behind on my goal to eat more fatty foods.

“Take me there, will you?” Kathleen asked. “To Kensington. I haven’t traveled nearly as much as I want.” Hadley III jumped onto her lap. Kathleen stroked the back of the cat’s neck, and Hadley III fired up her purr engine.

“Travel’s overrated,” I said. “Fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

“Twain?”

“It is.”

“I thought he burned out on traveling later in life,” Kathleen offered. “Said something about the only places he hadn’t been to were heaven and hell, and he had only a passing interest in one of those.”

“What a marvelous thing to say as they close the curtain.”

“I suppose so. Certainly beats the tired muse about what might have been.” Her chewing had slowed to a more reasonable, civil pace. “How’s your search coming?”

“We came up empty today. We talked to the brothers who abducted Jenny, but someone swiped her from under their nose.”

“Why?”

“She apparently told them that Billy Ray said he had two hundred eighty-four thousand dollars in his car. But she never mentioned it in her police interview, so who knows? The Colemans owe half, and we believe the party who lays claim to the other half snatched her. I have a few places—and faces—to check out tomorrow, but my forward progress has stalled like a Sherman tank in the mud.”

“Twain and Sherman. Contemporaries, I believe.” Kathleen pretended not to stare at the pizza box, where one lone piece awaited its fate.

I thought of Jenny’s cryptic exchange with Rutledge over General William Tecumseh Sherman. He
had
burned Atlanta. Sherman was born less than a half-hour drive from Greenwood, Ohio. That might have accounted for her knowledge; maybe she’d paid attention during a sixth-grade field trip. Sherman attended a Catholic church until the outbreak of the Civil War, and then, despite his devout wife and son, supposedly never again set foot in a church. The realities of war trumped the illusions of religion. I doubt they covered that in a sixth-grade field trip.

I wanted to listen to Jenny’s interview again. Maybe if I heard it repeatedly, something would come forth. I didn’t really believe that, but to claim that I was stuck in the mud was to put an optimistic bent on my forward progress.

“Did you know Twain came in and left with Halley’s Comet?” Kathleen asked, and shifted her weight forward. An aggressive, well-plotted move. Like I didn’t know who I was up against? Like she didn’t know my capabilities? I can see the board a dozen pieces ahead. I shifted my own weight to my left leg in the event the situation escalated to arms.

“I do,” I said hurriedly, fully aware that every second counted. “He even predicted he would die at the comet’s return, but I think he was off a day. Do not even
think
of touching that last slice.”

“
F
ine.” The word exploded out, as if her lower lip sprung our from under her upper teeth. The letter ‘f’ never had received, or warranted, such attention, let alone such a muscular effort. She curled into the chair like a wounded animal and took a sip of Taittinger. She followed it with a gulp of sugar water. Strange bedfellows. I claimed the prize and returned to the blinking red light. I recalled my conversation with Rutledge earlier in the day. Kathleen said something about the strength of the heart versus that of death. Some mumbo jumbo about Churchill also predicting his own death, which corresponded with the date of his father’s death. Day out days. Chatty Patty’s contribution to my nomenclature.

“What was that?” I asked, as I consumed the last bite.

“Were you listening at all?”

“No. I really wasn’t. Once I’ve done my reproductive act for the day, I pretty much punch the clock.”

“Truer words never spoken.” There was a genuine bite in her voice. I wasn’t surprised; we’d been down this path before. When there was a solitary piece left in the pizza box, words flew. Feelings suffered. Bridges burned.

I closed the lid, and we hit the bed for the second time.

Later that night, when sleep dumped me like an unsatisfied lover, I left Kathleen under a sheet
and
a blanket—we had a running disagreement over the thermostat setting—and returned to the porch. I stared at the channel marker. Hadley III pounced on top of the grill and did the same. She was fond of staring at the night. I kept waiting for something to come to me, but it never did. It was just a stupid, blinking, red light. Garrett and I planned to force the action tomorrow, and the sun couldn’t come up soon enough. Before I returned to bed, I cleaned the fluted glasses. I don’t like days encumbered with the previous night.