Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.
as a cruiser slipped beside me, Officer Bobby Neeland’s thick wrist over the wheel. Neeland was a square-built thirty-ish peckerwood who never smiled when he could smirk or laughed when he could sneer. Even the most desperate cop groupies at Flanagan’s avoided Neeland and gigglingly referred to him as Baby-Dick behind his back. His excessive-force complaints needed a separate folder, but since there were never witnesses beyond the aggrieved, he dodged them all. Neeland slowly lowered his window and peered over dark shades.
“Why you here, Ryder? No one died.” The blackheads clogging his nose looked like pencil leads.
“I’m following up on something, Bobby. What the hell happened?”
Neeland slipped off his glasses and stuck a sidepiece in his mouth, sucking noisily as he talked. “Somebody busted the window and tossed a can of gas inside.” He sneered. “Bye-bye hippie paper.”
“Any idea who did it?”
“Check the alley side, Ryder. It’s autographed.”
I walked to the side of the building. Spray-scrawled against the discolored brick was WHITE POWER in letters two feet high. Actually, it said, WHITE PO…, the last three letters a horizontal swipe toward the back alley.
When I returned, Neeland was gnawing his glasses with tiny sharp teeth. The clicking made me queasy.
“Whoever did it was more interested in running away than making a statement, Bobby.”
“Huh? What say?”
“Forget it. Not important.”
He stuck his spit-wet frames on and stared through black ovals. “Heard the paper’d been writing about the white power folks lately. Guess them boys got a little pissed. Shit, Ryder, you’re a college boy, you tell me, hows come the ni—blacks can have all their shit like the NCPA, but white people want to stand up for their own and it’s a big deal? I mean, where the fuck’s the justice in that?”
Inside the front of my skull a hornet started buzzing. I said, “Know who the woman in the building is?”
“Owns the paper. No, owned it. She ain’t s’posed to be in there on order of the fire marshal. I kicked her skinny ass out an hour ago and I’m about to do it again. Stay and watch, Ryder. It’ll be fun, she’s a real cop-hating cunt.”
“Keep your pimply ass on the seat, Neeland. Drive away.”
“Hell, you say.”
“Go tickle your baby dick.”
“You can’t talk to me like that, you fuck.”
I stuck my face in front of his, provocation for the terminally insecure. “I’m believing I just did, Bobby.”
Neeland’s knuckles were white on the wheel. I felt his hatred through the sunglasses; must not have been polarized. His voice shook with anger. “Get outta my face, cocksucker, or we’re gonna have trouble.”
I snatched his glasses from his face and tossed them over my shoulder, stepping back as I pulled his door open. Without the glasses his eyes stopped glaring and started blinking. He jutted his fat jaw and screamed at me from inside the cruiser. “I know what you’re doing, you crazy bastard! I beat your ass and who goes up on charges? Me. You ain’t getting me busted down, Ryder. I know your shit.”
I gave Neeland his redemptive moment of grabbing the door and slamming it shut. He screeched away howling curses. His sunglasses lay on the pavement glistening with saliva. Not wanting rabies, I let them lie. Then, not wanting anyone else afflicted, I stepped on them.
An aluminum awning hung off the building. I enjoyed its shade until the fortysomething woman trudged from the wreckage. She seemed overpoweringly familiar until I realized she looked like Abraham Lincoln. First, it was the eyes, deep set under cragged brow, as dark and honest as coal. Her cheekbones were high and prominent and her chin was firm and square. Black hair rose like a wave before being pulled back and secured behind her neck by a blue bandanna. Though her motions were reserved, her feet lifted high and coltish when she stepped, gangly frame following the large boots like it was surprised where it was going. She sat on the step to the parking lot and pulled off her gloves to reveal lovely hands. She leaned back on her elbows and closed her eyes.
“Salvage anything?” I asked.
She looked up, squinting against sunlight. “What do you care?” She’d seen me with Neeland, knew I was Cop.
“Just do, I guess.”
“We’ve published enough negative stories about your people that I doubt it.”
I sat down beside her. The smell of smoke was thick on her clothes. “My people? On my daddy’s side or my mama’s?”
The nuggets of coal inspected me. I said, “I read the article on the white power movement last night.”
“And?”
“It made me angry at people whose hatred of others is based on something as transparent as skin color or personal beliefs. Then I realized most of those folks have been stewed in those prejudices since they slid into the world.”
“Don’t apologize for them. They can change.”
“Many do. The ones that don’t spend ugly lives wallowing through inner poisons and never seem to be happy or grow into anything remotely worthwhile. Their hate-diluted lives seem ample punishment for the venom they squirt into the world. Still, it’s a damn shame on all sides.”
She thought for a moment, and pointed an elegant finger at a storefront bakery down the street. “Grab a cup of coffee?”
We made introductions on the walk to the bakery. I learned Christell Olivet-Toliver was the editor and publisher of the NewsBeat. I gave her my impressions without giving away too many of my facts.
“Let me get this straight,” she said, stirring sugar into steaming coffee. “You’re not totally convinced it was the white-power types last night?”
“I’m just saying immediately I start poking into the NewsBeat’s personal ads you get burnt down. Coincidence fascinates me.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Is it the headless murders that you’re investigating?”
“Without going into details, yes.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Basically, how the personals work.”
She cradled a ceramic mug in her violinist hands. “Let’s say you want to run an ad. All you do is write your ad, and email it to the NewsBeat. We assign your ad a code number and run it. If someone, let’s say Muffy Duffy, wants to respond—”
“I could never hit it off with someone named Muffy.”
She flipped a stir stick at me. “Hortense goes to the personals section of our Web site and emails a response. Our computer system directs it to your assigned number.”
“How does one pay?”
“Our personals are like a club, there’s a small fee both ways. Pay online, or mail a check or money order to our office.”
“Doesn’t sound secure, especially using check or plastic.”
“There’s no way the public can know who’s placing an ad or responding. People trust us, and we don’t violate that trust.”
I wagged a skeptical finger. “But computers will be computers; I’ll bet somewhere in its innards is a record of the electronic addresses of the respondents. I imagine a tech type could dig them out.”
“Maybe. With a court order”—she jabbed a long thumb at the charred building—”and the computer.”
“Everything’s gone?”
She smiled sadly. “Ashes to ashes and all that.”
So