A Visible Darkness (9 page)

15

I
was upriver on a rare morning paddle when the cell phone chirped from my bag in the bow of the canoe. I’d been up with the sun. Found it impossible to read and was actually pacing the wood floor of the shack when I decided to grind out a trip to the headwaters. The water had been high and the morning light spackled the ferns and pond apple leaves that crowded the edges. The river twisted and folded back in on itself and if you stopped moving, the deep quiet and moist greenness could sweep even an unimaginative mind back several millenniums. In the morning light I’d seen several glowing white moonflowers nestled in a small protected bog, and I knew that back in a thicket at the end of one offshoot stream were a half dozen undisturbed orchids. By luck no one had found them. But like a hundred years ago, when exploiters of the delicate flowers had plucked them from the dark hammocks of the Everglades until tĥey were nearly extinct, there was little optimism that these few would remain hidden.

I’d spent more than an hour plowing up past Workman’s Dam and on to the culvert where Everglades water from the L131 Canal poured into the river to give it an extra flow. I had pulled the canoe up onto the grass bank and was on top of the levee looking out over acre upon acre of brown-green sawgrass. The view extended to the horizon like unbroken fields of Kansas wheat. The only break was a dark clump far in the distance that looked like bush but was actually a hammock of sixty-foot-tall pine, and mahogany and crepe myrtle rooted in high ground in the river of grass.

The bleating of the cell phone in my canoe spoiled the quiet. I loped down the bank to answer it and Richards was on the line.

“Hey. Nice to hear your voice on such a great morning,” I said, sounding too chipper.

The silence on the other end dampened my enthusiasm.

“I don’t know how the hell you do it, Freeman,” she said. “But you’ve got one special nose for trouble.”

I was back in the world, outside another low-slung home on the northwest side. The address Richards gave me wasn’t hard to find. Three patrol cars and a crime scene truck were still parked at haphazard angles in front. A black, unmarked Chevy Suburban was backed into the driveway.

The uniformed cops were on the front lawn keeping a small gathering of people back. A black officer with a bald, shiny scalp was bristled up in front of a group of three black men. All their voices, even the cop’s, were ratcheted up to a high pitch.

“What you mean they investigatin’?” said one. “Shit, they ain’t done no damn investigatin’ the last time. Hell, they ain’t investigated nothin’ on this side of town, an’ you know that’s true.”

The cop had his hands spread out in front of him, as though the paleness of his palms facing the group would settle them.

“I know. I know. I hear you,” the cop was saying. “But you got to change some things from the inside, fellas. You know what I’m sayin’.”

I asked one of the other officers for Richards and as I was led up to the front door the knot of men shut down their conversation and watched me. They were the same three I had seen at Ms. Greenwood’s mother’s home.

“Comin’ through,” someone in the doorway said, and I turned as a black vinyl body bag was taken out on a wheeled stretcher. The eyes of the crowd followed it to the back doors of the Suburban. I followed the cop into the house.

No one was in the living room. A sectional couch sat against a wall of frosted mirrors. An expensive looking crystal clock was in open sight on an end table. Crime scene techs were working in the kitchen, spinning small fat brushes dipped in fingerprint powder along the window casements. Outside on the patio Richards was sitting at a table across from an elderly black woman who was chastising the detective as if she were a dull schoolgirl.

“Young lady, I have toll you and seven more of you all, no. I did not struggle. I took me a gasp of breath when I heard George go to chokin’ and spittin’ and I laid myself still. I didn’t even breathe until that pilla eased up on my face and then I still didn’t move. I knowed what was comin’. I didn’t just come in from the fields young lady. I know what these mens want.”

The woman looked at me when I reluctantly stepped out of the house. Her eyes stopped me. She’d seen too many men in her house in the last few hours. Richards turned and nodded at me and I took a step back and waited.

“So you just laid still and fooled him?” Richards asked, turning back to the woman.

“I don’t know about fooled,” she said. “Only one been made a fool is me. I stayed still. Left that pilla on my face and prayed to the Lord. Then I felt him put George down next to me. He covered him up like he was layin’ him to rest and I guess he was.

“I heard him leave and I still laid there, not movin’ a muscle, a dead man next to me. But I knows when to keep my head down, young lady. An’ when to get up and holler and that wasn’t no time for hollerin’.”

The woman turned her head and looked down at the empty tabletop. A single tear formed at the corner of her eye and then rolled down her cheek and disappeared into the wrinkles of her face. For some reason, it seemed out of place to see an old person cry. My own mother had always hidden that aspect of her sorrow.

This woman was unashamed.

“When I was truly sure he was gone, I called y’all on nine-one- one,” she said, still not looking up. “And I waited right on the bed, watchin’ after George.”

Richards let it go, touched the back of the old woman’s hand and got up quietly. Back in the house she crossed her arms in front of her. I put my hands in my pockets.

“The first guys on the scene had to take down the front door to get in,” she said. “Luckily, it was an experienced patrolman who checked the other doors and windows first and eyeballed everything. The place was tight. No signs of forced entry.”

She must have seen the frown on my face. “You saw the burglar bars on the windows?”

“And the deadbolt and chain on the front door,” I said.

“The utility room door leading to the carport is the only other entry not covered. The bolt was tight. Even the chain was hooked. But the crime scene guys studied the shit out of it this time,” she said, and I could see her eyes taking on the grayer cast that came with either anger or challenge.

“The clips on the jalousie panes, four of them, had recently been bent out, and then back.”

“Which means he put them back?”

“Carefully. Took his time. Had to figure both of them were dead and he had time to cover.”

“Jesus.”

I thought about Gary Heidnik in North Philly. Heidnik was a self-styled minister who’d been abducting mentally handicapped women for years and keeping them chained in his basement. When police finally discovered his “house of horrors,” they found one woman still alive and body parts of another in his freezer. Each day his neighbors saw him. Each day he carefully locked up his house to go out. Each day, careful and meticulous like a business.

“So that’s the husband?” I asked, hooking my thumb to the body bag. “It doesn’t fit my guy’s motive or yours, going after a couple.”

“Boyfriend,” she said, and she couldn’t keep a sardonic smile from pulling at the corners of her mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“George Harris is, was, Ms. Thompson’s boyfriend. He lived three blocks away. A widower. She’d been seeing him for about a year.” Richards was flipping through a narrow notebook. “Younger man. Seventy-four.”

Ms. Thompson was closer to eighty. She was in the same generation as the others on Billy’s list. Her living arrangement didn’t bother me. It was the change. If this was meant to be part of the string, the guy had screwed up on his surveillance. Which meant he was slipping.

“So the killer comes in, thinking she’s all alone and gets surprised?” I said.

“Ms. Thompson says George was very discreet,” Richards said, but her eyes were past me, caught by something out past the front window.

Outside one of the cops was having an arms-crossed discussion with two black women on the curb. One already had her hands up on her hips, not a good sign. The other was trying to see past him, as if just a glimpse of her friend inside might change the mask of worry on her face. I turned back to Richards.

“So, have you got anyone on the paper trail? The insurance?”

“That’s why you’re here, Freeman,” she said. “You and Billy already have an inside track on that. You could find out a hell of a lot faster than we could. If it fits with your theory, it’s a whole different case. But I’m not going to bring this whole idea to Hammonds without a more solid connection.”

She was a good detective, willing to look at the long odds if there was a possibility, but smart enough to play the game by the book. It was something I had never learned.

“Give me Ms. Thompson’s date of birth and social security number and we’ll work it,” I said.

She was already tearing a slip from her pad, and looking back outside.

“Thanks, Max,” she said, moving now to the front door.

When she left I wandered back through the house. It had the same feeling as Ms. Jackson’s, a place caught in the past. High school graduation pictures of the grandkids, propped up to form a small altar on the console TV. A threadbare runner over the worn carpet in the hall. Hand towels, faded with age, snapped around the handles of drawers. I kept my hands in my pockets and went into the utility room. The scene techs had dusted the door casings and all of the jalousie panes. They’d left smears of black powder on the white enamel of the washer and dryer. But there was something in the air, an odor that wasn’t an old person’s. It wasn’t a detergent or bleach smell. It wasn’t the sweat of men gathered here to do their technical work. There was one small window in the room, sealed and barred and facing the backyard and the alley behind. I stood staring and closed my eyes and took a full, deep breath into my nostrils. It was the smell of the streets, the subway passage deep below Philly’s City Hall, the heating grate after midnight at Eleventh and Moravian, the pile of stained and oily blankets piled around the homeless guy a block from the bus terminal on Thirteenth, and the acrid odor at the brick shack only a couple of miles from here.

I could feel it in my nose and it was a smell that did not belong here.

On my way out I passed Richards, who was escorting the two black women from the curb to the back patio where Ms. Thompson still sat. She pointed them in a direction they already knew and turned.

“You alright?” she said looking into my face.

“Yeah. I’ll call you when I get something,” I said. “Your guys check the alley?”

“Of course.”

“Nothing?

“Trash. Why? You expect anything?”

“No. Not with this guy,” I said and walked away.

Back in my truck I called Billy at his office. I gave him a rundown on the overnight killing and the information on Ms. Thompson.

“I’ll start as much of a paper chase as I can,” Billy said. “But you’re going to have to get this over to McCane.”

“Yeah. I’ll page him next,” I said. “I already owe him a call.”

Billy, as usual, was right. McCane’s resources would be better and faster than even he could get out of public records, though it wasn’t a collaboration I relished. Billy listened to my silence.

“Are you turning into a believer yet?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“And now we’ve got a survivor.”

“But she didn’t see a damn thing, Billy,” I said in frustration. “There was a pillow over her face the whole time.”

“Max. Max,” he said, waiting for my attention. “I didn’t say witness, Max. I said survivor. Survivor is a good thing.”

16

I
beeped McCane. Punched in my cell number and waited. My truck cab was hot, the glare of the sun snapping off the hood and windshield. Out in front of me the trio of men I’d seen earlier had taken up a position across the street in the shade of a tree. I started the truck and kicked up the A.C. My cell chirped.

“Freeman. How you doin’, bud? Thought maybe you forgot about me son, and right now, you don’t want to be forgettin’ me.”

“I can’t imagine you’re the kind of guy who’s easy to forget, McCane.”

In the background I could hear music. Maybe it was the same song that had been playing before. Maybe McCane hadn’t moved from his seat at the bar.

“I’ve got another name for you to run through your insurance sources,” I said, expecting a skeptical grumble.

“Yeah? Well start talkin’, cause all you’re going to be doin’ is listening when you get here, partner. We got us some fat to chew.”

McCane gave me directions to an address on the east side, and as I rolled down the street the neighborhood posse of three was watching me. All three turned their heads as I passed and I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the head man tipped up his chin.

I drove to a commercial strip in the city. This time of year the shopping malls and restaurants were doing a brisk business. The closer to the ocean, the brighter the building facades, the more commerce ruled.

I was looking for a movie marquee on the right and then a turn into a plaza. Kim’s Alley Bar was deep in the corner and I found a space in the lot several doors down and walked back. Inside the stained-glass door I had to stop and let my eyes adjust to the dimness. It was a small place, split in two by a hip-high wall that separated a lounge area from a bar that ran the length of the back wall. There were four men sitting on stools. As my sight sharpened I saw McCane at the far end, a sheaf of papers spread out in front of him, an empty shot glass and a half-drunk shell of beer within reach.

As I crossed the distance a young, perky bartender called out a greeting, as if she’d just seen me yesterday. As I came closer I saw that she was standing in front of the most handsome hand-carved wood and beveled glass bar back I had ever seen. I was still staring when I got to McCane’s side. The dark wood was intricately scrolled at the ends and across the high façade. Tiers of glass-fronted cabinets were stacked up, and they framed three individual mirrors. It had to be a century old, a stunning piece in this place where everything outside was new and sun-brightened and faux tropical.

“Suzy. Get Mr. Freeman here a drink, darlin’, so’s he’ll have somethin’ to put in that open mouth of his.”

McCane pushed back the stool next to him with the toe of his shoe and I asked Suzy for a dark ale in honor of the place.

“Nice, huh?” McCane said, matching my sight line to the woodwork before us. “They say it was imported from some place in New England somethin’ like fifty years ago in pieces and put back together here. Somehow makes you feel at home even if you ain’t never had anything like it at home.”

Suzy brought me an ale in a tall, thick glass and I took a sip and had to agree. McCane just pointed at his glass and she topped him off.

“So what’s with the new name, bud? We got ourselves another dead ol’ lady?”

“Old man,” I said and his eyebrows raised. “The woman lives six blocks north of the last one. She survived but the way it went down, I think the killer thought he’d finished her.”

“Dead guy came in and saved her?”

“No. Looks like he was already there, sleeping with her.”

McCane just snorted and shook his head.

“Breaks the pattern,” he said. “But not a bad way to go.”

I took a longer drink of the ale and in the ornate mirror I saw a wide-shouldered, rangy-looking man with a tanned and weathered face. His hair looked bleached from the sun and his forearms were lined with cabled muscle as he held the tall glass to his face. I did not have a mirror in my shack. The eyes I saw staring back at me over the rim of my glass looked somehow changed to me.

“So the old lady got a look at this suspect?” McCane said.

“No. Her face was covered with a pillow he was using to smother her. So we got nothing. Might not even be connected,” I said. “But it feels right.”

McCane seemed truly disappointed, and took another drink.

“All right, bud. But we got bigger fish to fry now.”

He filled me in on his middleman theory. He and Billy might not be able to look each other objectively in the face, but their paper chase had become an effective partnership.

Billy had run down the legal work on several of the insurance policies. In the ways of lawyers and accountants, there had been a meticulous recording of money expended in obtaining the discounted policies.

One of the line items was the payment of a finder’s fee. Billy had come up with a Dr. Harold Marshack, psychologist, address in Florida.

“Guy lives in a condo by the beach,” said McCane. “Gives the same address for his office. Manchester ran him through some Internet link he’s got with the state department of transportation and gave me his plate and car description and I tailed him.”

McCane finished off his shot. The small glass looked ridiculous pinched between his thick fingers. There was no alcoholic glow in his eyes. Just the enjoyment of letting his tale leak out slowly to me.

“I followed him to the grocery for milk and donuts. To the Office Depot for paper and stuff. To the bank. Then he takes me on a squirrelly ride to the west side. At first I thought he’d made me. But he was just being careful.”

McCane took another drink of his beer chaser.

“He makes one stop at some shabby liquor store on the edge of blacktown over on West Sunrise.”

No one at the bar acknowledged the slur, if they even heard it. The bartender kept washing glasses. The two guys watching ESPN never flinched. Bonnie Raitt kept singing about shattered love on the jukebox. I’d been wrong about the lack of effect the alcohol was having on McCane as he continued.

“He goes into the store empty-handed. Comes out with a bottle in a bag, gives a handout to some panhandler and goes straight back home.”

“You get anything from the store clerk?”

McCane pointed again at his empty glasses. I waved Suzy off.

“I came back. Old Tom in the store pretends like I’m not even there. Then when I started asking him about Marshack, he gives me some shit about ‘White cop askin’ bout some white guy in here? That’s a new one.’ And then he goes on about how Marshack comes in maybe once every couple months. He buys a bottle of Hennessy Cognac. Doesn’t use the phone or meet anyone. Just buys his booze and leaves. Only weird thing I could get out of the old coot was that the good doctor always pays with a hundred-dollar bill. No doubt an oddity in that place.”

McCane waited a moment to let the information settle and then asked, “That ring any bells for you?” He was looking intently into my face for an answer.

I was trying to grind out the scene in my head, working the possibilities. There was a new rock in there but with only the slightest edge to it, and I couldn’t get a hold of it.

“You on him again last night?” I finally said.

“I found a nice comfortable spot across the road from his place. Watched the Caprice for hours. Never moved.”

“What time did you leave?”

“I woke up at 5:00
A.M.
You know how surveillance goes. But the Caprice was still there. I even moseyed on over and felt the hood. Stone cold.”

McCane was a bigot. Might be an alcoholic. But he hadn’t lost all of his cop instincts.

“He ain’t your doer, Freeman,” he said. “Not the kind who creeps into houses and smothers old ladies. I seen him up close. He ain’t got the hands for it. But if you get your detective friend to get a warrant and toss his place we might find something.”

I stopped and let McCane’s words settle in my head for a few seconds.

“Which detective is that?” I asked, knowing Billy would not have brought Richards’s name into a conversation with McCane.

“Guy like you gotta have a local on the pad, Freeman. No P.I. I know gets along without one.”

He held my eyes with his and didn’t allow them to slide away. I didn’t respond.

“You track the Thompson policy if there is one. We’ll wait and see what we come up with,” I said, pushing back the stool and taking one last appreciative look at the bar back.

“Follow the money, bud,” McCane said, tossing back another shot. “Just follow the money.”