Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01 (5 page)

Chapter 8

I remembered Piedmont Park from the previous summer, when Rico and I had watched
Casablanca
one midsummer night, blanket to blanket with the soccer mom/buff gay guy demographic, drinking moscato straight from the bottle. At that time, barely a month had passed since Mom’s death, and I remembered feeling like I was in an overturned fishbowl, separate from the rest of the city. Every sensual detail had been as rich and distinct as an oil painting—the hazy islands of candlelight around us, the smell of crushed grass, the latent heat.

Now it was bright spring, dogwood time, and instead of Rico, Dan Garrity waited for me at the edge of the meadow, the spires of midtown jutting up behind the spreading green. He was dressed in his cop khakis and when he saw me, he tapped his watch. “You insist on seeing me during my lunch hour and then you make me wait?”

“I know, I know. I got lost.” I threw my tote bag under the tree. “Every other street in this town is freaking Peachtree—North Peachtree, West Peachtree, Peachtree Avenue Boulevard. Not a single actual peach tree anywhere.”

“They chopped it down last year. Miserable little thing. Had one peach on it, like a shrunken head.”

Garrity held a rolled pita sandwich in one hand, binoculars in the other. Every now and then he'd peer through them at the crowd on the meadow, scanning the green space. A uniformed policeman stood in the center with a microphone and a German shepherd at heel, but I couldn't hear what he was saying.

“What's going on over there?”

Garrity lowered the binoculars. “K-9 demonstration. That’s my buddy Lawrence, he works that unit. This is the dog’s first time out, and I’m making sure no PETA nuts show up and start making noise about turning man’s best friend into an assassin.”

Another person lumbered into the cleared center, dressed in gray sweats and a baseball cap, like a slovenly Michelin Man. I guessed he was the bad guy. Too bad real bad guys weren’t that easy to spot.

Garrity took a bite of his sandwich, which smelled like garlic and roasted meat. “You told me you wanted to talk, so start talking. I got thirty minutes.”

I decided to start with something safe. “You know the Beaumonts?”

“Those two, huh? What are they doing at Phoenix, filming some commercial?”

I explained what Mark had told me about Eliza and the reward he was offering. Garrity didn’t seem impressed.

“I’m not saying Mark doesn’t have good intentions, I’m just saying he never passes up a good PR opportunity when he sees one.”

“So how does the redhead factor into this scenario?”

“What redhead?”

“The one who went to the Mardi Gras ball with Trey.”

Garrity put the binoculars up again. “Oh, that’s Gabriella. She runs some spa boutique place over in Buckhead. She was at Phoenix?”

“No. But she
was
in this picture Mark brought over which Charley promptly confiscated. The woman did not like that picture, not one bit, and I suspect it had something to do with what’s-her-name.”

“Gabriella,” Garrity supplied. “And I don’t see why. They’re friends, those two. They’re even working on the reception together.” He held out the sandwich. “Wanna bite?”

“No, thanks. What reception?”

“The one for Senator Adams. It’s being held next weekend out at the Beaumonts’ new resort property, up at Lake Oconee. Private affair.” He waggled the sandwich in my face. “You sure you don’t want some? Beef shawarma, best in the city.”

I had no idea what shawarma was, but I took a bite anyway and got a mouthful of beef chunks and hot sauce. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Adams is a state senator, right? Running for governor?”

“If he wins the primary, yes, which is why this reception is so important. It’s for the heavy-hitters donation-wise, the twenty thousand and over camp. You interested in going?”

I made a noise. “Yeah, sure, I’ll just put a donation on my Amex.”

Garrity laughed and returned to watching the demonstration. I knew very little about Senator Adams, except that he was a popular guy, especially in the rural parts of the state. Not so many friends in the urban areas, but that was changing, I suspected, especially with friends like the Beaumonts. And it sounded like everybody else was big fans too—Phoenix, the redhead, my brother, Trey. All in it together.

Suspects. The word bubbled up from my subconscious. I was looking at these people as suspects.

Garrity watched the dog strain at its leash. When the trainer released it, the creature flew across the grass, lunging at the villain’s upper arm as he lumbered away. The dog leapt, clearing the ground, a furred missile. The force of its blow took the man to the ground, and the dog proceed to shake the padded biceps between its teeth.

“Got a little fast off the mark there, but he’s new. He’ll learn.” Garrity took another bite of sandwich. “Look, I know you didn’t come out here to talk about the Beaumonts. What’s up?”

So I took a deep breath and told him what I’d learned that morning from Trey. I started with the conversation he’d had with Eric, detailed the whole personal protection gig, then finished up with the upcoming conference call. Garrity listened seriously, not smiling. Not a good sign.

“But here’s the topper,” I said. “Trey swears that Eric’s lying.”

“About what?”

“Some conversation they had.” I frowned. “Is that for real, that stuff he was spouting about blinking and eye contact?”

Garrity kept his eyes on the demo. “Trey can do that. He can tell if people are lying.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No joke. A heightened sensitivity to micro-emotive readings, the doctors say. Trey lasers in on things that most people ignore—subtle eye movements, tics at the corner of the mouth.”

“Does this have anything to do with the brain scans in his desk?”

Garrity switched his cop eyes my way. Across the grass, on some signal I didn’t see or hear, the dog suddenly released the bad guy and loped back to its trainer for a pat and a treat.

“Well?” I said.

“You were snooping.”

“I was looking for a pen.”

Garrity raised the binoculars once again.

“Okay, fine, I was snooping—so what? Trey’s a secret agent. If he didn’t want people snooping in his desk, he should lock the drawers.”

“He can’t. If anything goes wrong, the EMTs need access to those files.”

“Why?”

Garrity sighed. “This is where it gets complicated. You might want to sit down.”

I sank down cross-legged on the grass. Garrity did too, propping his back on the tree and stretching out his legs. Across the meadow, the dog’s tail swept back and forth like a metronome, while at the other end of the field, the padded bad guy staggered to his feet for a second attack. I envied that dog—it had somebody to tell it what to do.

Garrity kept his eyes on the demo. “What did you see in those folders?”

“Bunch of legal papers. Your name everywhere. Some head x-rays.” I signed and reached into my tote bag. “Like this one.”

“Where did you—”

“It was an accident. I’ll put it back, I promise.”

Garrity took it with a frown. “This is an MRI scan, one slice of it anyway. You’re not a doctor, or you would have noticed the subdural hematoma, right in the frontal lobe.” He handed it back to me. “The diagnosis was coup contrecoup. Closed skull injury. Which means that compared to a normal brain—”

“Normal?”

“Uh huh. Because Trey’s isn’t. Not anymore.”

I hung out with this knowledge for a little while. Damn, why’d I picked this scent to follow, the one that was suddenly uncomfortable and complicated and very personal.

“So what happened?”

“Car accident. Killed his mom at the scene, put him in a coma for five days. He came out of it, of course, but it left permanent cognitive impairment.”

“Are you telling me he’s brain-damaged?”

“Actually, I prefer screwed-up.” He said this without a hint of a smile. “The technical term is TBI—traumatic brain injury. But Trey doesn’t care what you call it, that’s part of how he’s screwed-up.”

I felt light-headed. This wasn’t making any sense, but then again, it made perfect sense. I remembered the faint silvery scars at his temple, in the middle of his chin, the prescription medicine in the drawer.

“But he seems so—”

“Well, he’s not.” Garrity’s tone was sharp. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s still smart as a whip. You saw his office, right? He can find anything in it in two seconds. His brain’s the same way—one giant flowchart filled with rules and subsets of rules and addendums to rules. Memory like a bank vault.”

“He doesn’t forget,” I repeated, feeling dazed. “He told me that. I thought he was just trying to piss me off.”

“No, just being blunt-ass honest. He has no sense about what to say, what not to say. He lets things slip if he’s not careful, which is why he stays so damn quiet most of the time.”

I swore under my breath. I’d noticed that too, the nonsequiturs, the pauses, the cautious bare-bones responses.

“He has trouble finding words sometimes. There’s some amnesia, mostly the two years before the accident, and some damage in comparative analysis. He thinks in a straight line now, lots of focus, but no periphery. No shades of gray. Right or wrong, yes or no, stop or go.”

“Is this why he’s not a cop anymore?”

“Yes.”

It was a clipped response. I waited for him to continue, but he changed the subject suspiciously fast.

“Look, I’ve known him for ten years. He was my best man when I got married, he was there when my kid was born, there when I got divorced. We played poker and drank beer and went to Braves games and then one night—bam!”

He bit his words back. I didn’t pry further. There are minefields in everyone’s psyche, and the best thing you can do when you realize you’ve stepped into one is to stop moving. So I did. We sat in the quiet shade, cocooned in bird song and traffic murmur and distant applause as the dog readied for attack once more. Garrity crumpled up his shawarma wrapper and stuffed it in his pocket.

“I was on duty that night,” he said, “so I got there right after the ambulance. Semi crossed the median on 400, just past the Perimeter. Trey managed to avoid it, but ended up head-on with the overpass embankment. Anyway, he got a huge out-of-court settlement from the trucking company, almost three million. And what’s the first thing he does with some of the two million or so left after bills? He pops for a freaking Ferrari. Trey was not a Ferrari guy; he had a Volvo. Secondhand. A condo in Buckhead was next, one of the high rises. And I’m sure you’ve noticed the wardrobe.”

“Rather limited in color.”

“Yeah, black and white all the way. Armani, most of it, or some other Italian crap I can’t pronounce. I mean, he was my best friend and then suddenly—”

“Was?”

“Yeah, was. But then he was gone and then he was back, but it wasn’t him anymore, so we just…” He shrugged, too casually, then stood. “Look, I have a nasty feeling this thing with your brother is about to snowball, so you’d better have your ducks in a row, you and your brother both, and figuring out how to work with Trey is a good start.”

“Does Eric know about Trey’s…?” I waved my hands around my forehead.

“Of course he does. It’s part of what he does at Phoenix—compiling mental health profiles. Didn’t you know that?”

The folder on Eric’s computer labeled Phoenix Confidential. I had been five seconds from getting into it. Now it had been collected and stored at Phoenix, out of my reach, thanks to the efforts of Trey and Landon and the recently unemployed tech support dude.

Across the green, the padded bad guy was spinning in a circle, the dog fastened tight on his arm, its tawny body pinwheeling like a ride at the fair. The applause ratcheted up in volume, punctuated with hoots and whistles. I stood up too.

“No,” I said, “I didn’t know that.”

I was discovering there was a lot about my brother I didn’t know. But I did know one thing—there was more to this story than I was getting over shawarma and K9 demos.

***

The new key to Dexter’s shop was silver and efficiently shiny. The lock was not. I jiggled the handle and bumped hard with my knee, but the door remained stuck. It took two more bumps before I got inside.

Dexter’s Guns and More was more like Guns and Less now, the firearms and knives having been stowed in the safe, leaving the display cases and wall hooks empty. Only the Confederate flag and its associated paraphernalia remained—an infantryman’s jacket, a box of buttons, a single boot.

I put the keys on the counter. The fluorescent lights washed the beige walls into blandness. The smell of linoleum and floor wax tangled with the vanilla potpourri I’d put in the ashtrays. It looked empty and blank, but not fresh-blank like a new canvas. Empty-blank like a hole.

I had no idea how to fill it. I pictured the racks single file with rifles, the cases lined row after row with matte black metal—Walther PPKs and Glock 19s, weapons both utilitarian and exotic. Magazines and clips and the ammo that came in cardboard boxes with the texture of playing cards. Shot cartridges and shells. Camo and holsters.

A gun in your hand isn’t just a gun
, Uncle Dexter told me once.
It’s part of you. Don’t ever pick one up unless you know exactly what you’re capable of doing with it.

He should have warned me the same was true of gun shops. Stripped and bare, it was even more daunting than when stuffed wall to wall with weapons. Part of me wanted to bolt right back to Savannah. Right after I smoked seven cigarettes in a row.

Instead, I stuffed another piece of nicotine gum in my mouth and went to the safe. Then I pulled out one of the revolvers, a Ruger .357 double action. Petite, with a cushioned grip and shiny stainless steel frame, it nonetheless packed a wallop. This one was unloaded, but I could feel its potential. Unfortunately, until Cobb County coughed up my carry permit, it remained in the shop, untested.

I put it back in the safe and prepared to return to the Ritz, hoping I wouldn’t run into Trey there. As long as my tote bag contained his MRI, I knew guilt blazed across my forehead. But until I could come up with a plan, its plush bubble of security was best, at least for the night.