Convincing, Lucas thought. But Crandell was an expert in convincing others of false events. Lucas closed his eyes and his head flooded with memory. Comets turning to flashlights. A strobing white light high above. Voices through a predawn fog.
“I saw something at the base of the microwave tower. It should be to your left. Can you see the tower light blinking above the trees?”
“Be careful. He’s…resourceful.”
Resourceful? Hardly. But one learns from mistakes…
Lucas shook the past from his head. Even if Ryder had died in a natural accident, things would start moving fast now. And if Ryder were alive somewhere, albeit temporarily? They’d move like a whirlwind.
What was the advice his mentor had provided? His beloved teacher?
“When a shitstorm starts blowing, cover your ass and figure a way to get your enemy to walk into it.”
I heard a car pull close outside, tires crunching over gravel. Two minutes later Crandell entered the room, shutting the door behind him. He wore khaki Dockers and a polo shirt. A heavy gold watch wrapped a thick wrist. His arms were pelted with golden hair. He was broad-chested, tanned, powerful-looking.
“Hello, darlin’,” he sang in a raspy baritone.
I stared at him.
He said, “Now, I didn’t mean that as an endearment, Ryder. It’s a line from a song that goes-”
“Spare me, Crandell. You have any idea of the prison time you’re racking up?”
He clapped his hands and laughed like I’d shared my favorite joke. “What’s the sentence for abuse of a corpse?”
“What?”
He leaned close. “You’re missing and presumed dead, Ryder. You were blown by a storm into the path of a freighter. By the way, your little pointy boat confirms the story; it’s in real bad shape, sorry ’bout that.”
His breath was disgusting, like something in him was rotting. I turned my face away. He picked up a pencil on the table, began pricking my cheek with the point.
“Question time, if you get the point. What do you know about Lucas?”
“Lucas?”
I felt the pencil point break my skin.
“Ouch, Jesus.” prick
“I’m moving up to your eye next.” prick, prick
“He’s one of the Kincannon brothers,” I said. “The prodigal son, or something. He’s a psycho.”
Crandell pecked the sharp lead randomly on my face as he talked: forehead, chin, nose, cheek.
“Where is he?” prick, prick
“How the hell would I know?” prick
“What did Taneesha Franklin give to DeeDee Danbury?”
“What?”
Crandell swung the pencil in a roundhouse arc, like he was driving a knife into my right eye. I gasped. He stopped an inch short. I stared at the pencil point above my pupil. Crandell’s hands were absolutely steady. My heart hammered in my chest. Crandell set the pencil back on the table. He reached into his pocket.
“I’m showing you two photographs. Tell me what they represent.”
“I don’t know what you’re-”
“Shhh. Two pictures. Ready?”
He pulled a photo from his pocket. “Number one.”
A long shot, Dani and Taneesha Franklin in the front window of a Waffle House, coffee on the table, pages spread between them.
“If I recall, they’re discussing reporting techniques.”
Crandell retrieved a second photo from his pocket, held it before my eyes. It had been taken in late afternoon, the shadows lengthened. Taneesha Franklin stood on Dani’s porch, handing her a small parcel.
“What is Miss Franklin handing Miss Danbury?” Crandell asked.
“A copy of All the President’s Men.”
Crandell tucked the photos back in his jacket, then jangled the change in his pocket.
“I want to know what Danbury got from Franklin. And where it is.”
“It’s a fucking book. A gift. Have your boss ask Ms. Danbury. Buckie-boy’s your boss, right? He hired you to put loony brother back in his pen?”
Crandell grabbed the handles at the foot of the bed and whisked me from the room.
“Come on, Ryder. I want you to meet a friend of mine.”
I was propelled down a tight hall off the main room.
“Who might that be?” I asked.
He grinned and licked his finger.
“Mr. Ampere,” he said, touching his wet finger to my bare toe, “Buzzzzt.”
Harry Nautilus stood in the covered loading dock of the Alabama Forensics Bureau and watched two interns pull the kayak from the Volvo.
“Easy,” Wayne Hembree said. “Kid gloves.”
“Kid gloves?” an intern laughed. “This thing is beaten like a…” He saw Hembree’s eyes. Said, “Where do you want it, sir?”
Hembree gave instructions, then turned to Nautilus, his voice somber. “Harry, we’re all devastated. Carson was like a-”
Nautilus put his hand on Hembree’s shoulder, squeezed.
“Not right now, OK?”
The interns set the kayak on a table that reminded Nautilus of an outsized autopsy table, a bank of lights overhead. Someone flicked a switch and the kayak was bathed in white light. The boat was bent like clock hands indicating four o’clock. Hembree reached out and stroked the craft with a fingertip.
“I’ve never dealt with a kayak before.”
“You got one now, Bree. Learn.”
Hembree looked across the room at one of the techs, a young guy with an intense look, as though doing math in his head and being timed on the results.
“MacCready, you know polystyrene, right? Polymers?”
“I love plastics. Plastics are my life.”
“Drop what you’re doing and give me a hand,” Hembree said. The guy walked around the boat until he found the manufacturer’s name. Aimed the scowl at Nautilus.
“They still in business? The manufacturer?”
“I guess so. The boat’s pretty new.”
Nautilus tumbled through time, recalling when Carson had purchased the boat. He’d had a party, like a housewarming, except for a kayak. Carson set the boat in the living room on sawhorses, hung leis and Mardi Gras beads over its pointy tips. Everyone at the affair, thirty or so friends and neighbors, had to put a hand on the boat and offer a blessing of some kind.
There was a fair amount of drinking and most benedictions were funny. Nautilus recalled being dragged to the center of the room by Danbury, his hand pressed against the boat. He’d never been good at speeches-hated them-and mumbled some things about winds and tides and friendship.
No one laughed like they had at the other little speeches, everyone getting quiet. Several people wiped away tears. A tipsy Carson had hugged him. It was embarrassing and Nautilus had slipped outside to walk on the beach. When he returned the kayak was in the street, upside down on the shoulders of a dozen people, Carson riding it like a horse as folks waved tiki torches in the dark.
What if those nights were over?
“…tensile strength and resistance and we might be able to…”
“What?” Nautilus said, jolted into the here and now.
“Talking to myself,” MacCready said. “I’ll give the manufacturer a call. They’ll probably have specs on tensile strength, resistance strength. Or can put me on to someone who knows.”
Hembree looked at Nautilus, said, “I’ll call you when we have something.”
Nautilus was almost out the door when Hembree called after him. Nautilus turned.
“Get some sleep, Harry,” the moon-faced technician said, his eyes quiet wells of concern. “You look ter-pretty tired.”
Nautilus pulled the Volvo from the loading dock. He drove six blocks before realizing it was raining and turned on his wipers. His stomach grumbled from not eating in over a dozen hours. A small seafood restaurant appeared in the rain and he pulled into the lot.
“It’ll be a few minutes, babe,” a hefty, fiftyish gum-chewing waitress said, scribbling his order on her pad. She tossed the ticket to the cook behind the counter.
Harry Nautilus put his elbows on the table and dry-washed his face with his hands. The restaurant was quiet and his thoughts loud.