Yours, Mine, and Ours (28 page)

“Like they needed to be in the hospital for three days for
concussions
,” George sneered. “They were … uh … dammit! Tip of my tongue.”

“Malingering?” I suggested.

“There you go,” he said comfortably. “Malingering. Three days of clean sheets and pretty nurses. Adrienne did them a favor.”

Wow. For George, that was almost gushing. He was in a good mood. But then, he lived for the hunt. We all did, or else we’d be driving ice cream trucks or teaching quantum physics.

Actually, Paul was asked to teach just that, but apparently the entire freshman U of M class just about went nuts trying to reach the conclusions he had, and a couple of them had nervous breakdowns and the parents got mad and Paul kept insisting that if they really, really tried, they, too, could smell orange, and then they changed his meds and Paul had to go away for a vacation.

It’s wrong that I thought that was funny, right?

“Is it me, or does his yard look like the setting for
Bastard Out of Carolina
?” George bitched.

“I had that exact thought,” I told him as we swung into the driveway. “That
exact
thought.”

“That’s because you’re both small-minded Yankees,” Emma Jan said. We got out of the car and saw that Behrman hadn’t yet gotten a new dog.

And wouldn’t. Ever. If he knew what was good for him (though, clearly, he didn’t).

“Avon calling!” George said, hammering on the door. “I know you’re in there, Behrman and Loun! I can smell your redneckness!”

“Do you two do anything by the book?” Emma Jan asked. It didn’t sound sarcastic, more like she really wanted to know.

“Shush,” I said.

“You two!” It was Behrman, standing in the doorway as he held the front door open with tented fingers. “Get the hell off my property. You’re goddamned lucky I don’t sue you, the FBI, and the tinshit American government for what you did to Dawg.”

“What
we
did to Dawg?” I could actually feel my eyes bugging out. They did that, you know, for real. It was a fight-or-flight response to increased blood pressure. “Are you serious? All we did to Dawg was feed her and take care of her.”

“Wastin’ your time. She won’t learn.”

I thought about how I’d woken up that morning … thought about the tinkling of the bell Dawg nudged with her head because she wanted to go out. Sure, I’d been gone a whole day, but that still meant Dawg had toilet trained in about seventy-two hours. Miraculous, what incentive could do. Or the lack thereof.

“So, we’re looking for a serial killer who’s been killing white boys since 1954,” Emma Jan said. “Feel like helping?”

That did it. The one thing (other than “You’ve just won a million dollars!”) that would encourage Behrman to let us in, no questions asked.

George sighed happily and took a last look around the yard. “I’ve missed this place.” Then we went in.

chapter sixty-two

Loun greeted us
with, “If this is about our meeting tonight, you can just file that with ‘lawful assembly’ and head on back down the road.”

“Aw. And here I was hoping you’d vote me mascot and introduce me to all the boys.” George was looking at the framed mug shots; I knew that amused expression. I didn’t think we had to worry about Adrienne showing up and causing trouble. George was the one to keep an eye on.

“We just had some questions about The Good Citizens,” Emma Jan said.

Behrman smirked. “I don’t think it’s your kind of group.”

“But I came all this way to get an application.” She, too, was studying the mug shots. “So, funny question. My fellow agents and I have been working this pesky case, the JBJ killer? Awful. It’s just awful. And we found your parking stub in the pocket of the latest victim.”

Loun and Behrman gaped at each other, then me. “You
what
?”

“See, that’s what we said. I mean, what are the odds?” I didn’t want to think about that, for real. Someone was helping us. We would not have come back to Loun and Behrman if not for that parking stub. And the killer didn’t leave it because he was getting sloppy. I hated to think how many more fourteen-year-old kids would have to die if the killer hadn’t been inclined to give us a hand. It was maddening, and infuriating. And depressing. Mustn’t forget that one. “So we wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“Big question number one,” George said. He was now studying the mug shot of the white woman. All black males … except for the white woman. “Are you the June Boys Jobs killers?”

They nearly fell all over themselves explaining that they were not, not, not in a million years, jeez, they raised a little hell when they were kids, but they’d never, you know,
kill
a white boy! The very thought! The very idea! We had the wrong men!

“Yeah, yeah, calm down. Jesus, Behrman, sit down before you faint.” Amused, George actually helped Behrman into an overstuffed chair that was the color of, and gave off the odor of, Cheetos. “We’re leaning away from that theory. Maybe. We could still arrest you at any time. Imagine the media fallout: Local Bigots Are Drooling White-Boy Killers.”

“Aw, Jesus,” Loun said, his face the color of bleached cotton. “You can’t—we didn’t kill anybody!”

“Okay. But if that’s true—”

“It is! It is! Jesus, it’s not
us
!”

“Okay, but then … the killer knows you. Or you know him.”

Them, actually. Loun and Behrman knew
them
. But how? Here was the awful thing: I believed Loun and Behrman knew the killer. But I don’t think they knew
how
they knew him/them. So how could we get something out of them, if they didn’t know it themselves?

I thought back to what George had said earlier: if we knew why, we’d know who. Did it stand to reason, then, that if we knew how, we’d know who, too? And why was this thought sounding like something Dr. Seuss would come up with?

“You can start by telling us why you parked in the bank ramp the day of the last murder,” Emma Jan said.

So they told her. And it sounded good, it sounded legitimate, recruitment meeting for their lame little would-be militia, but it was hard for me to concentrate on what they were saying. I couldn’t look away from the mug shots.

A bunch of black men. And the white female. Old mug shots, too … from the 1950s, if I had to guess. Why here? Why were they printed and carefully framed and hung in the trailer of a confirmed bigot?

If I asked Behrman, he’d tell me. But I didn’t want to know what he would tell me. I wanted to know, for myself, what these pictures had to do with any of this. Because I felt their import, even if I didn’t know why.

Black men. One white female. Old. They were old … like the JBJ killer was old. The one who’d committed the first murder, anyway. He
had
to be pretty ancient by now. Maybe even dead by now. But when he got his start, he would have been much younger.

And he got his start

(his start)

he got started when when when

I was getting a headache. Or I could smell blue. Maybe that was it. Is this what it was like to smell blue? Because it was
really
aggravating. It felt like my head was going to split

chapter sixty-three

in two.

“What is the significance of these photos?” I asked Behrman, a greasy, twitchy man I had immediately disliked on sight. My second sight of him had not changed my first impression.

At my tone, George swung around in a hurry, looked me in the face, then said to Emma Jan, “Shiro’s in the house.”

“Very good, George. Tomorrow we will work on your multiplication tables. Mr. Behrman? Answer my question, if you please.”

“It’s … it’s just research. Are you okay, Officer? You sound funny.”

“I have a touch of DID.”

“It’s going around,” George said, then snickered.

“What, is that like Asian Flu?”

“
Just
like it,” I agreed. “Research for what?”

“What do you care? Look, Phil and I aren’t your guys. And if you thought we were, we wouldn’t be having this talk in my house, we’d be downtown. I don’t know why you’re really here and I don’t care. So why don’cha head out?”

“But we have so many questions,” George whined, and I knew he was going to drop the bomb on them. I was
so
pleased I would be there to watch. “Hey, I have an idea. You tell me about the mug shots. And then I’ll tell you something about yourself you didn’t know.”

“What bullshit is this?”

“You’ll liiiiike it,” George wheedled. This was a gross exaggeration at best, an out-and-out lie at worst.

I had no problem with either. I caught Emma Jan’s glance, and grinned. Her eyebrows arched, and the corner of her mouth twitched. I
knew
I was right about her. She liked a fight. Any kind of fight.

“It’s okay,” Loun said, giving Behrman what George would call a manly shoulder-chuck. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Hell, they’re the government.”

“It’s true,” Emma Jan said, winking at me. “We are.” She waved and mouthed, “Hi, Shiro.”

Waved? She waved at me? Like she had spotted me in the middle of a parade?

Hmm. That was not the most inappropriate analogy for what was happening …

I waved back, making an effort not to roll my eyes. A wave. Good Lord.

“I just meant that maybe it’s good that they know how The Good Citizens got started. Then they could spend more time getting the scum off the streets and less time hassling white patriots.”

Oh, I loved it. The patriot card. It had been used throughout the ages to justify all sorts of nauseating atrocities. “But we’re patriots!” As if that changed anything. As if it justified everything.

I was a patriot, too. America was the finest country on the planet and I was lucky to live here. That does not mean I would use my love of the country to justify serial murder. And I was mystified by those who would.

“Tell you what, these mug shots? These are how The Good Citizens got started. Back in the day, my family lived in South Carolina, where they had a real colored problem.”

“Oh, I’m gonna love this story,” Emma Jan said dryly. “I can already tell.”

“Is a ‘colored problem’ like a pestilence problem?” I asked, and dropped a wink at Emma Jan. “Or would you say it is more like a plague? Rats, maybe? Mosquitos in summer?”

“Shut up,” George said curtly and, surprised, I did. When he focused, when he forced his sexually-obsessed sociopathic me-me-me mind to seize a puzzle and solve it, he could become admirably laser-esque. “Go on, Phil.”

“Right. Anyway, my family—these’d be my great-great-grandparents—they were having a colored problem but nobody wanted to do anything about it. They were farmers, they just wanted to be left alone to do their shit.” Encouraged by our complete attention, Loun plunged ahead. “But two little white gals were killed by a black buck right around that time—they were eleven and eight, the girls were. Black bastard wanted to cut himself a piece and I guess they fought him, or cried or something, so he beat ’em to death.”

Silence. George, Emma Jan, and I were afraid to breathe. Sometimes, when suspects were on a roll like this, you could find out more than you thought because they would say more than they planned.

“That must have been dreadful for your family,” I said. I tried to look meltingly sympathetic. Damn. This was a job for Cadence. She could pity a rabid timber wolf who’d devoured premature babies for lunch. “Very very … dreadful.” Ugh. This sort of thing was not in my skill set.

Loun nodded, his broad face darkening as he recalled the family tragedy. “Yep. Tore my folks up, tell you that right now.”

“Your folks back then, or your folks now?”

“My daddy told me the whole story when I was just little, so I’d know life was precious and you can lose someone you love without any warning at all.”

“A difficult lesson for a child to understand. It must have been…” Dammit! Why could I only think of one word?
Cadence, I never thought I’d say this, but I very much wish you were here right now.
“… dreadful?”

He nodded sadly.

Too sadly.

That was when I realized Loun’s sorrow was as fake as my sympathy. And it made sense. He had never known the girls; likely he had never known anyone that far back in his family tree. They would have been names in a newspaper clipping to him, all his life. Never more. It was impossible that they should be more.

So why, then, why should he be torn up about their murder, dreadful thought it was? Answer: he was not.

But he could use it to justify bigotry. He could use it to justify all sorts of horrid behavior. So he did. And here we all were.

“The kid that did it—and it was a kid, some black teenager—he got the chair, and back then they didn’t fuck around with ten years of appeals.”