A motion through his window caught Harry Nautilus’s eye, headlights moving slow down the street, one light dimmer than the other, ready to fail. A minute later, the same car passed again.
Nautilus went outside to sit on the porch.
The car made a third pass. The brake lights flashed and the car slid to the curb. Pace Logan got out. He shot a nod at Nautilus, started up the walk, hands in his pockets. Logan stopped at the steps to the gallery. He looked uneasy, blew out a breath.
“Listen, Nautilus, I wanted to say I’m sorry. About Ryder. I, uh…”
“It’s all right, Logan. Thanks.”
Logan looked into the street and cracked his knuckles one by one, then toyed with his watchband. He wants to say something else, Nautilus thought.
“Have a seat, Pace. Can I get you a drink?”
Logan looked surprised at the offer, or the use of his first name, or both. He sat in a wicker chair carefully, as if afraid Nautilus would pull it from beneath him.
“That’d be nice…Harry. Bourbon and water, if you got it. Thanks.”
Nautilus returned a minute later with the drink. Logan took a sip of bourbon, spun the glass in his palms. His cowboy boots tapped his nervousness.
“I was always happy as a street cop, Harry. It was good work that needed doing. Sometimes you had to think fast, but you didn’t have to think deep, y’know? I was comfortable with that. But then, time goes on. When you meet people, tell ’em, ‘I’m a cop,’ they’re like so what? Or, Hey, can you get a ticket fixed for me? But tell ’em you’re a detective and suddenly they’re seeing Kojak or Law and Order. It was an ego thing, the chance to make like something more’n a guy that drove around knocking heads and standing between people yellin’ at one another.”
Logan spun the glass a long moment.
“I’m not a very good detective, Harry. Not like you. It eats at me, sometimes.”
“Pace, you don’t have to-”
“It goes back to that night in the rain, Harry. Taneesha Franklin. That’s why I’m here, I think. To tell you a story.”
Nautilus felt electricity sparkle up his back. Said, “I’m listening.”
“Shuttles likes to cut me down like I’m a relic, telling me how law enforcement’s becoming so scientific… Did you know this about latents, Pace? Did you know that about DNA? Did you know satellites can track a car from a hundred-whatever miles up? Did you know the new generation of cruiser cameras can read license tags from four hundred feet away?”
“I didn’t know that,” Nautilus said. “Maybe I’m a relic, too.”
“Shuttles loves talking about all the new crime-solving hoo-hah: computers, cameras, geo-whatever locators-anything that makes me come off like a dinosaur.” Logan cleared his throat. “I say this so you’ll know I don’t like Shuttles-I hate the cocky little prick, Harry-but I don’t think I’m letting it mess with my judgment.”
“I believe you, Pace. Go on.”
“I was seeing a lot of the same scenery that night. Shuttles was driving and just cruising one quadrant of the district. I said, come on, Tyree, move it around some. So he moved a couple streets over. I thought, Fuck it, the kid’s like a stuck needle. Then he told me how you’d been talking behind my back about what a lousy cop I was for screwing up that one case.”
“Pace, believe me, I never said a thing like-”
Logan held up a broad hand. “I know, Harry, leastwise I do now. Then the call came, you and Carson heading for the scene. But after Shuttles’s goading I wanted to get there first, grab it from you.”
“But after you got there, you turned the case over to us, Pace. Why?”
“When I saw what had happened in that car, I knew you guys would do better than me and some fresh-from-a-uniform kid.”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to-”
“I been thinking about that night, Harry: After you and me had our little scuffle, I was leaning against the Mazda to catch my breath. Then I saw a plastic bag floating in the gutter, riding high as a sailboat, just starting to get pounded under by the rain. It was about then Shuttles found the knife. Am I crazy, or does that seem strange?”
Nautilus thought a few seconds. Saw what Logan was getting at.
“It could mean a whole lot, Pace. Depends on the rain flow and where Shuttles was standing.”
Logan sipped from his drink. “A couple weeks back I slipped two pictures out of the murder book. I wanted to refresh my head on the lay of the land. The rainwater was rushing away from where Shuttles found the knife.”
Nautilus looked at the aging detective, raised an eyebrow. “What you planning on doing with this observation, Pace?”
Logan smiled sadly, slapped Nautilus on the knee. Stood and shook stiffness from his legs.
“What I just did, Harry, hand it to someone who knows more than me. I’m probably just imagining things, but I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for the time and the drink.”
Logan stepped from the gallery, headed down the walk toward his car. Logan got inside, fired up the engine, pulled away. I blew it, Nautilus thought, watching the retreating taillights. I looked at Logan’s bumbling and fumbling, filed him under Lazy, filed him under Dimwit. Instead, I could have said, “Pace, sometimes this stuff can get complicated; here’s an idea you might want totry…”
CHAPTER 43
It seemed late when Crandell stepped into the room, but it was closer to dawn. I hadn’t slept, thinking all night. He checked my restraints and I saw his watch: six a.m. I did the dopey-eyed look, moved slow as my heart beat fast. It had been hours since Miss Gracie had disconnected the IV tube, now running beneath the sheet and cover, dripping not into my blood, but the waste can beside the bed. Yesterday I had felt like a head attached to a rotting log. Now I felt muscles, ligaments, life and motion beneath my neck.
“Figure anything else out, Ryder?” Crandell asked, tapping the half-depleted IV bag, letting his finger trail along the tubing. He started to push aside the sheet and check my shunt.
I snapped my head his way. “This is all a setup, right? A major league piece of sleight of mind. Lucas isn’t a psycho.”
It got his attention. He dropped the sheet and raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve been thinking, Ryder.”
I babbled a free-association of ideas stewing in my head for hours. Anything to keep his eyes on my face.
“Lucas was acting out, a high-strung kid in a family of self-absorbed greed mongers. He may have taken youthful rebellion to the limit, but he wasn’t pathological. The brothers’ problem was Lucas’s brain. If he calmed down, Maylene might think Lucas was the one to hold the reins of the family businesses, not Buckie or Nelson or Racine, a trio of puddingheads.”
Crandell winked. “Those puddingheads are smart enough to call me. Made me a rich man.”
I said, “I know about the DuCaines, about Tree-house Boy. The family precedent for homicidal psychopathology.”
Crandell shrugged. “It was a fucked-up family.”
“Lucas’s brain threatened the brothers. So you or someone killed Frederika Holtkamp. Told Maylene that Lucas did it, that he had an obsession with Freddy’s teacher.”
“If you found out about her killer brother, you know the old gal knew a bit about obsession.”
“When Lucas escaped last month, you killed Taneesha Franklin in case Lucas made his way to Maylene and tried to convince her he wasn’t a maniac.”
Crandell raised an interested eyebrow. “My, aren’t we figuring some things out! Ms. Franklin got wind of some of the dealings, little stuff. She played junior reporter, going to the KEI offices and asking questions. What a dumb bitch. We used one of old Buck Senior’s knives, a family heirloom.”
“Lucas’s prints on it, of course.”
“Easily done. Shuttles got us a picture of the murder weapon from a Forensics report. We showed Mama Kincannon the family knife in a photo on official Alabama Forensics Bureau stationery and she fainted dead away. She truly thinks Luke is the incarnation of Tree-house Boy.”