Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.
shake your head, Mrs. Talmadge,” I said.
“What?”
“Smile real wide but shake your head no.”
She caught on and did it, adding a little tinkle of laughter lost in the shuddering engine sound at our backs. I winked at Harry and we waved farewell to Mrs. Talmadge. We turned to see her husband leap from a dual-tracked 3500 Dodge Ram diesel with a tailpipe like a howitzer muzzle. What wasn’t painted was chromed. Lettering on the door proclaimed, ATLAS INDUSTRIAL GENERATOR SALES, YOUR INDEPENDENT POWER COMPANY. Larry left the door open and the engine running. He went an easy six three, two fifty, with a neck to match Harry’s. Clouds of graying hair puffed from the collar of his Polo shirt. His face was red, his chest expanded in full turf-protection mode; we were probably walking places he’d pissed.
“Hey,” he bellowed, “what the hell you guys doing?”
“Thanks again, Mrs. Talmadge,” I called over my shoulder. “Sorry to bother you.”
“I asked what you’re doing here?” Larry growled.
I smiled, Nice doggy. “You must be the mister,” I said politely, flipping open my badge wallet. “We had a bad hit-and-run in the Bankhead Tunnel yesterday. A witness got a partial tag number and said it was a yellow sports car—” I talked loud enough for Monica to hear me.
“You wouldn’t believe how many yellow vehicles have similar numbers,” Harry said, sounding exasperated. The Harry and Carson show.
My turn. “We’re going to all possibles looking for damage to the right front fender. Obviously”—I looked at the Beamer—”it wasn’t your wife’s vehicle.”
“Well…damn right,” Larry huffed.
We drove away as Larry pulled suitcases from the monster truck. Monica and I shared a glance. She mouthed, “Thank you,” then turned a warm and welcoming face to man’s-man Larry, home from the hills and home from the sea.
Save for me, the Church Street Cemetery was deserted. Behind Mobile’s main library on Government Street, the small cemetery was a place to walk slow beneath ancient trees, ponder headstones, and count the passing of years. Harry’d needed to drop a couple books at the library, and I’d been drawn to the cemetery’s hushed commitment to the past.
When the Adrian case was an explosion of sirens in my head, rats and fires and the burned-out cinders of a young girl’s eyes, I often came to sit beneath the trees and listen to the quiet. The death of Tessa Ramirez had been unspeakably violent, yet the graves here seemed so peaceful, as if Death paused in its journey between whatever worlds it traverses to let the chosen cast off the memories of dying, gathering themselves in cool shade and simple surroundings. Though Tessa had been buried in Texas, I felt one graveyard was all graveyards, conjoined beneath—or beyond—the ground. I’d hoped the Church Street dead called the petite dark-haired girl to their midst; perhaps this was where they mentored her, gave her understanding.
There must be understanding, I thought; why else for the universe to utter us into existence than to allow our individual voyages of discovery—detection, if you will—with the threads of all passages finally woven into the Ultimate Understanding, a great cosmic cooing of “Yes. Why didn’t I figure it out? How elegant. How simple.”
Or maybe it’s all random. Our most brilliant lies are those we reserve for ourselves.
“Invisible lines everywhere,” Harry said, jolting me from a reverie about reverie. He was back from the library and bending to study a grave laid thirty years into the nineteenth century. Invisible lines was Harry’s term for lines connecting seemingly unrelated events in homicide cases. Invisible at the onset, they gradually revealed themselves until we saw we’d been tripping over them all the time.
“It’s in the words on the bodies,” I said. “They’re messages with meaning and purpose.”
The messages had been withheld from the media and public to weed out those who exorcised God knows what past horrors by confessing to every bizarre killing. No one admitted killing street-corner dope boys, but let a woman be found steeped in savagery and the wild-eyed confessors lined the block.
“Meaning and purpose if you’re balls-to-the-wall nuts,” Harry said. I sat on an elevated grave and Harry sat beside me. He sighed and looked up and studied the clouds or the treetops. When he turned back to me his eyes held a sadness and concern I hadn’t seen in a long time.
“I’ve been worrying about you, bro.”
I stiffened. “You mean the thing with Ava? I’m concerned about her, sure, but it’s not—”
“Not that. You’re not doing anything on your own, are you? On the headless cases?”
I jumped up. “What the hell would I do on my own, Harry?”
His eyes searched my face. “Like independent research. I know you get wild hairs sometimes.”
“Do you think I’d hold something back, Harry, is that it?” My voice came out clenched. I heard guilt beneath the anger.
His voice was calm, reasoning. “I didn’t say that, I was just wondering if you were doing any blue-sky. During the Adrian days it was like you were calling some psychic hotline, y’know. The shrinks and profile types saying the fire over the victim’s eyes was a form of hiding, that Adrian knew the vics. Then suddenly—like out of air—you get the idea it was a bonding mechanism.”
“It was a chance idea that panned out, nothing but serendip—”
Harry cut me off with a lifted finger. “Next, you decide all the victims were chosen by proximity to another fire in their recent pasts. It turns out true. You suggest shadowing the fire department, checking scenes of potential arson, trying to find a guy scoping out his next vic. We do and—bingo!—you see that guy with the hair-pulling deal, what was that called?”
I looked away, hating how the Adrian case and its flotsam kept floating into today, bumping my ass.
“Carson, what was that hair stuff? Yanking it out?”
“Trichollomania, dammit.”
“Yeah. You saw that guy at the fire pulling out his hair like he’s shredding a rotten sweater. And there he is, Joel Adrian.”
I fought the compulsion to walk away. “I was there, Harry. I remember it.”
“Maybe there’s other stuff you don’t remember. Or don’t want to.”
My attempt at laughter broke before leaving my lips. It came out as a croak. “You think I’m getting senile? That it?”
“What I remember most is after the case. You laying in the hospital with that breakdown and—”
I rushed toward him, hands jabbing the time-out signal. “Hold it, whoa…stop. No it wasn’t, dammit.”
Harry looked up with innocent puzzlement. “Wasn’t what?”
“A breakdown, dammit. It was stress and lack of sleep. Nothing else, nothing mental.”
“Did I say mental breakdown? I don’t think I did. I meant physical breakdown, exhaustion. Like you said, stress, hurrying and worrying, lack of winks. I do recall the word depression.”
“Lack of sleep combined with stress can mimic chronic depression.”
“All I know is you could barely walk or talk for about a month.”
I stood and looked at my watch without noting the time. “Maybe we can make something out of this day. Do some work.” My voice came out angrier than I’d expected.
Harry put his hands on his knees and pushed slowly erect,