A Hard Death (6 page)

J
enner walked out into the steel-gray morning, blinking in the bright haze. Barely eight a.m., and he couldn't believe the humidity—stepping out of the air conditioning was like being immediately draped in a soaking-wet wool sweater.

The patio was empty. Jenner sat at the picnic table with his vending machine breakfast—a can of Coke and a Snickers—and stared vacantly at the puddle-splashed lot as he ate. There was still a handful of cars in the lot, probably people who'd worked for Marty since the beginning—Jenner had avoided the break room after the autopsies. Rudge had left around four a.m., waking the now-docile sheriff to drive him home.

Jenner's eyes burned; they kept tearing up. He told himself it was just the fatigue. His back muscles were buckled up tight, and every bone in his body throbbed. The highest-profile double homicide in Douglas County history…

My friend.

Jenner had just autopsied his friend. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, rested his elbows on the picnic table, then sank his head into his hands and began to cry. He struggled to stop the tears, to still the shaking of his shoulders. He propped his elbows on the tabletop, then pressed his face firmly into his open palms, tried to be less obvious.

He gave up, and let the tears flow. His friend was dead.

There was the clack of an opening door; Jenner looked up, but the door was already shut again.

Jenner pulled himself together. He was finished now, done. He'd labeled the clothes and hung them in the drying closets, completed the autopsy notes and wound diagrams, put the blood and tissue samples in
the refrigerator, dictated both cases for transcription, readied the death certificates for signing as soon as the dentist confirmed the ID.

He should go home, back to the motel—Jenner could feel his body coming apart from lack of sleep, the muscles raw and ragged, about to pop, the bones on the point of shattering.

He washed the chocolate bar down with another acid blast of lukewarm Coke, wiped his damp face, then glanced around to make sure the coast was clear. He forced himself to his feet, then stood, hands on his hips, leaning slightly backward to stretch.

He heard steps on the gravel behind him and turned to see Marie Carter, the office manager, pale, eyes puffy, clutching her black cardigan to her body as if the temperature were in the forties instead of the high eighties.

“Doctor…is it true? Bobbie…drowned?”

He nodded.

“And Bucky Rutledge is saying Dr. R. was tortured.”

“Yes. I'm afraid that's true, too.”

He thought she was going to cry, but she just nodded and said, “I'm glad I caught you, doctor. I was able to reach Sheree Roburn, the Roburns' daughter; she'll be here tomorrow. And Detective Rudge left you a message early this morning, but said I should wait until you'd finished the cases before I disturbed you. When you have a second, can you give him a call to discuss your findings, please.”

“Sure.”

“The number's on your desk.” She hesitated a second, then said, “And Dr. Jenner?”

“Yes?”

“You should go home and get some sleep.”

A
dam Weiss leaned back against the tree, his ear still warm from the cell phone.

How could Tiff have done that to him? She knew damn well what she meant to him; didn't they have an (unspoken) agreement that they'd be faithful over the summer? He'd known there'd be temptations—more for Tiffany, in DC, with its clubs and bars, while he was out in the middle of some stinking fields, knee-deep in cow shit, ministering to a bunch of fucking wetbacks. But still—that she'd do it in less than a month?

And with
Andy Willet
? It didn't make any sense at all!

Maybe if Adam hadn't answered the phone, if Tiff had had more time to think about it, she'd have realized it was just some dumb mistake. After all, they'd been to an embassy party, then fucking Willet had taken her out to a club with some of his other embassy buddies, and somehow,
miraculously
, they'd ended up at Andy's place, with Tiff too drunk and tired to get in a cab, too drunk to offer any resistance as Andy's fat fingers dropped the zip on her Zac Posen party dress.

And what was killing Adam—no, really, just
killing
him—was that she sounded happy. She'd called him at ten thirty a.m. on a Sunday, sounding happy, to tell him she'd just fucked Andy Willet, and that Adam was the only person she could talk to about it. What the hell was she even thinking?

The line at the taco stand was shorter now. Adam looked to see that his bike was still okay over against the tree. He was behind a couple of Guatemalans, next to a battered hand-lettered sign that read
DESAYUNO MEXICANO: PAPAS CON CHORIZO
$1, then, in English,
BRKFST TACOS $1 EA
.

Tiffany had picked up on his silence, had tried to prod him into a
response, but Adam had remained stoic and mute. Finally she'd said she just didn't understand him, she'd thought he'd be happy for her because he knew how much she liked Andy (that last bit just about blew his mind). Then she'd hurried off the phone, saying sharply, “Okay, talk later, buddy,” hanging up before he could think of a smart or cutting reply.

Then it occurred to him: she was probably still drunk! It was ten thirty a.m. now, they'd probably got in maybe three thirty or four a.m., some drunken fumbling, then The Act, fall asleep at five a.m., wake up at nine thirty a.m. for her little Walk of Shame…Yes, she could very well still be drunk.

The thought buoyed him, and, by the time he was pedaling down his street to his little white shack in north Bel Arbre, he was imagining how their make-up conversation would go that night.

Adam braked sharply, let his bike drop.

Someone had smashed in his door. The flimsy slab of fiberboard hung lopsided, buckled around the doorknob by multiple kicks, canting steeply into his living room.

The events of the night before—the fucked-up
campesino
who'd disappeared into the storm, the fears he'd laughed off when he woke safe and sound in his own bed—all came flooding back.

They'd come for him.

Too late he heard the soft clink of the gate behind him, turned to see two stone-faced men blocking the path. One held up an arm, and motioned Adam forward, gesturing into the shadow of the doorway, the house now a ghastly white face, the door a mouth gaping to swallow Adam whole.

The man pointed into the shack again. He had a cane machete at his hip, a long, wicked blade, curved on one side, gaping saw teeth on the other.

Adam did as he was told.

T
he manager served Jenner his Fontaine Shack Special Burger.

“Here you go, sir…Enjoy!”

A plump man with thinning gray hair plastered to his scalp, he lingered by the table, waiting for Jenner's reaction.

Jenner took a bite; it was like swallowing packing material.

“How do you like it?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Best darn burger in town!” Nodding with satisfaction, he headed to the hostess stand to deal with the traffic jam at the register.

Though it was still late afternoon, the storm had turned the world outside black. A stab of lightning lit the bare trunks of cypress beyond the parking lot; through the curtain of rain, Jenner saw a young man and woman running hand-in-hand across the lot to the shelter of the awning, laughing. He watched them enter the restaurant, watched the way the woman swept the raindrops from her hair, the way the man's hand casually pressed her wet white shirt against the skin of her back. They were in their late twenties—a fairly new couple, he guessed. He watched the hostess lead them to the best table, watched the way their fingers lingered entwined a little before they separated to sit.

The wind picked up and spattered the rain against his window.

He looked down at his book; he'd started
The Kite Runner
the week before, but was getting nowhere with it. Dr. Rother had said he might have difficulty concentrating.

Fatigue washed through him in waves, his eyes burned, his shoulders ached.

He looked around the room. Families, mostly young, with kids. And couples. Mostly young, kids on the way in the next year or two.

The manager stood at the register, the Fontaine Burger Shack Code made flesh, his maroon apron every bit as infested with pins, slogans, clips, and tags as those of his teen employees. He spoke with two girls, and looked on as they recruited another girl and a boy, and then they lined up in front of a table with two middle-aged couples and a pair of chubby kids sitting at it. The servers clapped and sang “Happy Anniversary” with manic enthusiasm.

On the jukebox, Bo Diddley died away and was replaced by Buddy Holly tremoloing “Not Fade Away.” There was a bright flash of lightning, and an almost immediate ear-splitting crash. Several diners screamed; the lights dimmed for a second, then came back up to sheepish laughter. The jukebox fell silent as it rebooted.

The manager went out to the parking lot to investigate; as he opened the door, there was a blast of hot wet air; Jenner saw palm trees, brilliantly illuminated by the awning's spotlights, swishing wildly in the torrential rain.

“Are you still eating? Anything else I can get for you?”

Jenner looked up at the server, then down at his burger. He shook his head.

“Just the check, please.”

“If you'd like, I can package it up so you can take it with you.”

“No, thanks. I'm good.” He leaned back and stretched stiffly.

The server cleared the table, then disappeared. Jenner pulled out his wallet, stretched it wide-open.

A five-dollar bill and three ones.

Christ. He had maybe sixty or seventy dollars in his motel room, and just two or three hundred left in his bank account. The county needed two full pay periods before Personnel could let him have his wages; he'd get his first Douglas County check on Thursday. Jenner placed his MasterCard onto the check folder.

Maybe he should call Jun or Douggie in New York, borrow a little cash, just as a cushion—in two weeks, the motel and the rental car would just about wipe him out again.

He tried to think of ways to economize—a smaller car, maybe. There
wasn't a cheaper motel in Port Fontaine, but if he drove up the coast a bit…

The manager was standing next to him. He leaned in and said quietly, “Sir, there seems to be a problem.” His barbershop quartet–striped shirt was soaked over the front and shoulders, and raindrops beaded on his pale face.

“A problem?”

“I'm afraid your card was declined.” He looked Jenner up and down, at the flat wallet on the table in front of him.

Jenner said, “Could you run it again? There shouldn't be anything wrong with it.”

“We tried three times, sir. Declined. This card is no good.” He paused; he wasn't unsympathetic. “We also take Visa, American Express, and Discover.”

As Jenner fished out another card, his waiter reappeared and handed him a large bundle—the remains of his burger.

In the parking lot, Jenner sat in his car and called Jun in New York on his cell phone; he left a message asking to borrow some money.

J
enner's route home took him back through the heart of Port Fontaine. The town had been founded in the early 1900s by Ambrose Burmeister, a New York saloon keeper who'd fled Hell's Kitchen after the swill he peddled had blinded several customers. With funding from a Chicago meat baron (an exile himself, after being caught canoodling with the mayor's nephew in the back of a brougham), Burmeister aggressively cleared the swamp along a mile-long swath of coast, diverting the brackish water into a series of ornamental canals and ponds. He planted beach grass and palms along the waterfront, where the beaches were covered in sand so white he marketed it as “diamond dust” in his brochures.

His instincts were spot-on: the beach and one of the state's first golf courses quickly attracted a wave of affluent home-buyers. Members of the burgeoning middle class who couldn't quite afford Palm Beach swarmed to Port Fontaine. The rush of gold further increased after photographs of Rudolph Valentino and Nita Naldi lounging by the pool at Stella Maris, the Craine family mansion, appeared in
Photoplay
magazine in 1922.

Burmeister's first home, a solemn Beaux Arts box in marble and stone, sat among the pastel pink and green summer houses on the Promenade like a mausoleum in an amusement park. The mansion now housed the Port Fontaine Historical Society; giving Jenner a tour of the downtown historic district, Marty had joked that, while Port Fontaine didn't have much history, it had plenty of Society. That evening, sitting on the lanai with a cold Heineken in his hand, Marty had told Jenner about the days after 9/11, when waves of Lear jets arrived at Port Fontaine's tiny airport, each plane belching out another Fortune 500 CEO, mobs of bold-faced
names, all fleeing to their estates in Douglas County. “They were like pashas, Jenner, each man richer than the next…” His voice died away under the hiss of sprinklers outside the screens.

Jenner drove south on I-55, heading to the Palmetto Court. The highway sliced Port Fontaine in half along class lines, cutting off the Beaches to the west from the Reaches in the east. Burmeister's expansion east into the Everglades had been a constant battle against flooding, and where houses in the Beaches were stately and solid, the Reaches was made up of cheap tract housing built alongside waterways that, the joke went, flooded when the ambient humidity hit 65 percent.

Jenner had chosen a cottage away from the motel office, figuring it would be quieter. He parked and climbed out of the car stiffly, ducking his head and cursing himself for not renting a car better suited to his height. After the storm, the air was cooler, soft and wet, sweet with the scent of damp grass. He reached into the car and pulled out his scene kit and the Fontaine Burger Shack leftovers.

Time for bed.