Lucas clutched the purse to his chest and turned his eyes back to the ATM. Women afforded the best opportunities. But he’d take whatever fate provided and work with it.
He waited twenty minutes, only one vehicle stopping at the ATM in that time, a pickup truck with dual tracks and a stars ’n’ bars decal on the window. A good ol’ boy, Lucas thought. The type to keep a pipe under the seat. Or a gun.
Not worth the risk.
Minutes later a compact car entered the bank lot: a woman, driving slow. Lucas gathered the purse in his hand and threw it into the shadowy corner of the bank lot, twenty feet away. It landed as the car’s headlights washed over the pavement. The lights hit the purse, passed by, angled toward the ATM.
Slowed.
Stopped a dozen feet short of the ATM. Lucas held his breath.
Take the bait.
The car began backing up. Lucas raised to a crouch. Tensed his muscles. The car parked beside the purse. He heard the door locks snap off.
Lucas was up and running.
Jack Kerley
A Garden of Vipers
CHAPTER 3
The next morning I arose to a sky the color of clay. Harry and I had worked until three in the morning, ascertaining what we could from the victim’s name and vehicle papers. Thunder rumbled in the distance, another storm cell rolling through. The phone rang as I was pouring coffee. It was Danielle Danbury-my girlfriend.
“Carson, can you stop by before work?” Her voice was somber.
“What’s wrong, Dani?”
“Please hurry.”
“On my way.”
Though Dani’s profession as a TV journalist made us natural adversaries, we’d been thrown into an uneasy alliance last year, tracking collectors of serial-killer memorabilia. The bizarre episode had taken Dani and me-I simply couldn’t use her on-air moniker, DeeDee-to Paris to interview an elderly art professor. While in the City of Light we’d become lovers, a condition that remained.
The erratic and overlong hours of our jobs made getting together more chance than certainty, and not counting sleeping, we grabbed maybe fifteen hours a week together. At least that had been the norm until a couple months back when Harry jumped into Logan’s mess and I’d played catch-up eighteen hours a day.
I raced down the steps of my stilt-standing beachfront home and jumped in my old pickup, making Dani’s house in twenty minutes. She was in reporter garb: good jeans, white silk blouse, burgundy linen jacket, strand of pearls at her neck, tiny matching earrings. Her blond hair was lacquered, a concession to the cameras. She clutched a copy of Woodward and Bernstein’s book on Watergate, All the President’s Men, to her breast. Her eyes were red and swollen.
I stepped inside, my heart racing. “What’s wrong, Dani? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Carson. It’s a friend… She was killed last night. Murdered. I just read it in the paper.”
There was only one murder last night.
“Taneesha Franklin,” I said, reaching to hold Dani. “I was there. I’m sorry. Was she a good friend?”
Dani wiped her eyes, leaned back to look into my face.
“More like mentor and mentee, I guess. But she was a wonderful person.”
“She was a reporter?”
“For a tiny radio station, WTSJ. She was a newbie, spent her days covering city meetings, ribbon-cuttings, yapping politicians…the usual starter crapola. I’d had lunch with her a few times, Teesh asking questions about journalism, me answering. She was bright and dedicated and excited about her little reporting job. What happened, Carson? The paper had maybe four column inches. I can read between the lines. It sounded…brutal.”
“It was bad. Probably a robbery that went haywire.”
Dani and I hear so many lies in our jobs that we don’t lie to one another, not even the little white ones. Dani was still holding All the President’s Men. I tapped its cover, tried a smile.
“You’re about thirty years behind on your reading, babe.”
“It was a gift from Teesh. I told her my copy of the book was about to turn to dust, and she bought me a new one. She dropped it off a few weeks back. Read the dedication, Carson.”
Dani opened the book to the inside cover. I saw script in a neat and flowing hand.
To DeeDee…who told me how things are supposed to work, and when they don’t, how to maul the bastards messing in the machinery. Love, Teesh
“Isn’t that great?” Dani asked.
“Maybe a tad strident.”
“It’s how the good ones start out,” Dani said, a tear tracing her cheek.
I met Harry at the department and we went to the hospital. Last night we hadn’t been allowed to interview the trucker who’d discovered the crime scene-he’d suffered a heart attack, but was now stable.
Arlin Dell was a strapping guy with about five bedside devices either measuring or dripping something. The doc gave us five minutes. I pulled up a chair, Harry leaned against the wall. Dell was pale, his voice light. He seemed a bit fuzzy, like he was on a mild narcotic.
“I’d just left the yard with a full load of electronic gizmos headed for Memphis. I cut down that side street, rain pouring, me wondering if it’s gonna be like this all the way to Tennessee, when I see this red car in the middle of the street. No lights. I jam on my brakes, about jackknife the rig.”
“You see anyone near the Mazda?”
Dell made a whistling noise, like laughing or choking. “An ape jumped out of the car, ran straight at my headlights, then cut to the side and jumped into the shadows.”
“Ape?” Harry said.
“I climbed from the rig and looked in the car. When I saw what was inside, my heart grabbed in me like a fist. I made it back to the cab, called 9-1-1.”
“Tell me you didn’t really see an ape.”
“It was a hairy guy.” Dell patted his cheeks. “Furry face, long hair. Like an ape. Or the thing in those Star Wars movies.”
“A Wookiee?” I asked.
Dell shrugged. “Ape. Wookiee. Or maybe one of those guys from ZZ Top.”
“I hate a bearded perp,” Harry said as we left the hospital and aimed the Crown Vic for WTSJ, the victim’s employer. “The bastard shaves and he’s got a brand-new face.”
I’d been replaying Dell’s recollections in my head, picturing myself high above the ground in a cab-over Mack.
“You know what really got me, bro? The perp ran straight for the rig, then juked at the last second, disappearing. He ran a dozen feet directly into the truck’s headlights.”
Harry tapped his thumbs on the wheel. “Headlights, engine rumble, windows like eyes…The truck should have scared the hell out of a guy who just committed a capital crime. Standard response is haul ass the opposite direction.”
“Maybe thought he could attack the truck,” I said. “Roaring on crack or PCP. Or maybe insane.”
“He’d already pitched his knife. It was on the other side of the vehicle. If he was going to war with the semi, he was going at it bare-handed.”
“Ballsy son of a bitch,” I said. “Or a full whack-out.”
“Never a good thing,” Harry noted. “Either choice.”
WTSJ was in a squat concrete-block building near Pritchard, a town abutting Mobile to the north. The receptionist’s eyes were shadowed with grief, but she forced a smile.
“Lincoln’s the station manager. He’s on the air two more minutes.”
She put us in a small anteroom. Lincoln Haley was in the adjoining studio, visible through a thick window. Haley was mid-forties, square-jawed, a neat beard. His forehead was high and protruding, like it was filled with songs. Racks of CDs were at his back. He wore a black headset and spoke into a microphone the size of a beer can. He saw us looking, flashed two minutes with his fingers, leaned over the microphone. Speakers filled the anteroom with his voice.
“…coming up on the hour, time for Newsbreak. After the hour it’s time for the Queen Bee, Miss Pearlie Winston, bringing you the best in funk ’n’ blues in the whole United States… Now I’m gonna take you to the top with Marlon Saunders…”