Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) (18 page)

“Very fancy,” I said. “You know the feds could seize this car if they caught you with drugs in it, right?”

“Which is why I would hypothetically keep drugs in
it
,” he said, “rather than at my home, where my family lives. Police can have the car, it’s just a car. I can get another if I have to.”

I let out a low breath. “You’re a class act all the way, Darrick.”

“You making fun of me?”

“Would it matter if I was?” I asked. “Homeless people missing. Last question, come on.”

“Look, I’ll sell to whoever can afford it,” he said, letting out a sad sigh. “Yes, I sometimes sell to homeless people. You got names?”

“Miguel Alonso, David Griffin.”

He stared at me. “Griffin? He’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“By lightning?” This edged toward panic.

“No,” I said, “torture and murder.”

“What the hell?” he asked. “Yeah, I knew him. Used to go to the shelter over on … hell, which one was it? It was the one Cordell Weldon’s bunch fund.”

“Cordell Weldon?” I asked.

“Yeah, you know,” he said. “Community leader. Upstanding citizen.” He said it in a way that made me think he didn’t carry that opinion himself. “That Cordell Weldon.”

“I’ve heard the name,” I said. “Kind of a loudmouth?”

“Heh,” Cary said. “You could say that. Only time he shuts up is when he’s sleeping, the rest of the time he’d knock his own mother over for a six-second sound bite on the local news.”

“You seem pretty familiar with him considering he’s a pillar of the community and you’re, like, a …”

“Local businessman?”

“I was going to go with ‘piece of crap,’ let you counter with ‘filler of needs,’ and then settle on ‘dirty, dirty drug-pimping whore,’ but you’ve gone and tossed that out the window,” I said.

“Hey,” Cary said, “if I was in Seattle right now, I’d be living like a king instead of hiding behind a mall.”

“Yes, you’d be living like a king in King County,” I said. “But instead you’re in Fulton county, where you’re Full-of-tons—of shit. How do you know this Weldon guy?”

“I decline to say,” he said, adopting a surly attitude and slumping down behind the wheel. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway, and it has nothing to do with your search.” He put his hands on the wheel at ten and two and just sat there, staring straight ahead. “Have I answered your questions satisfactorily?”

“Sure,” I said, and stood up. “If you don’t take your drugs to your family’s house, what do you do with them at night? Because I’m guessing parking on the street with this ride would be an invitation to burglary and grand theft auto.”

He turned his head slowly. “Is this an official inquiry I have to answer under threat of … whatever you’re threatening?”

“No,” I said, shrugging. “Just idly curious.”

“Great,” he said, and hit the starter on the car, “because I’m done being idle.” He waited until I stepped back and then floored it, letting the Corvette’s engine roar as he took off, nearly fishtailing around the corner as he went.

“Cordell Weldon,” I said, saying the name out loud again. It sounded familiar for some reason.

While I was on my way to Roscoe’s house, I examined my motives a little closer for why I was even doing this. I’d just had an up-close glimpse about how my supposed hero was not so heroic, bashing the hell out of a guy who probably deserved it, but … I don’t know. I guess what bothered me was that it seemed like such a punching-down kind of thing to do. Heroes were supposed to take on the threats the rest of us couldn’t take on. And then here was Sienna Nealon, the ultimate badass, and she smashes up some dude who said the wrong thing to her. Not that he didn’t deserve a hit, but she could have whacked him in the gut and been done with it. No hospital visit needed.

It was excessive force, I thought. How much punch did he need? Less than what she gave him.

I made my way down the street like a normal person. I wasn’t feel a lot of energy at the moment, and I didn’t want to draw attention. I had business of my own to complete, after all.

I needed to talk to Roscoe Marion’s family. And while I had a good idea of where he lived, it wasn’t exact. Fortunately, the internet saved me on that one. Pulled it up on my smart phone in about two and a half seconds.

It took me twelve minutes to walk to his house. Twelve agonizing minutes in which I felt like I was loafing along, trying not to think about what was on my mind, even while it refused to get off my damned mind. My head was like a merry-go-round, and the constant thoughts of what made a hero and how they might fall in my estimation was a ride I couldn’t escape.

When I walked up to Roscoe’s house I saw a couple cars out front. I didn’t think about it being him that died, because I hadn’t seen him in a while. And I must have missed the buzz of gossip at work because … well, the day after he died was the day Mr. Weldon and Mr. Cavanagh came by.

It seemed like a million years ago now, even though it was yesterday.

I walked up to Roscoe’s front door and knocked, not too hard. An older lady answered wearing funeral clothes and I felt pretty out of place in my shorts and t-shirt. “Uh,” I said, “my name is Augustus Coleman, and I used to work with Roscoe—”

“Come in,” the woman said, drawing me into a hug that just about squeezed the life out of me. “Come right on in,” she whispered in my ear as she turned me loose. “It’s good of you to come.”

“Are you Roscoe’s momma?”

“No, I’m his mother-in-law,” she said, closing the door behind me as I stepped into a front hall. “His momma died years ago. Ever since he and my Shelia have been together, I’ve always considered him like one of my own.”

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “I just heard about it a little while ago.”

She nodded. “Shelia’s on through there if you want to give her condolences. Some of the ladies from my church brought by food, if you want some—”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, “but thank you.”

I walked through into a dining room where a younger woman, probably about five-ten years older than me, was sitting in a chair. She was all done up fancy, wearing a string of pearls around her neck. There were gold inserts between each pearl, and they gave the necklace a nice gleam.

“Mrs. Marion?” I asked, and her eyes fluttered as she looked up in surprise, like I’d snuck into the room and blown a bullhorn or something. “My name is Augustus Coleman, and I used to work with Roscoe. I came by to … pay my respects.”

She blinked at me a couple times, and it was obvious as hell the woman was in shock. “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, voice almost dead.

“All right,” I said and started to scoot out the seat next to her. She actually blanched a little, and I halted, moving around the table to sit opposite her instead. I figured maybe I got Roscoe’s old seat, and I didn’t want to bring up any bad memories.

“You said you used to work with Roscoe?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m a line supervisor at Cavanagh.”

“You’re so young,” she said, looking at me with eyes that could only be described as dulled. I suspected she’d cried all the emotion out of them in the last couple days.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Roscoe used to joke with me that I’d make line supervisor before he did. I used to be a floater when I started, and his work partner—Markeith—was always calling in sick, so he and I used to work the line together a lot.”

“Oh, yeah, Markeith,” she said, nodding. “I haven’t heard that name in a while. I almost forgot about him.”

We settled into an uncomfortable silence for a couple minutes. “I’m sorry to ask this,” I said, “but … can you tell me what happened? No one seemed to be able to give me an answer, and Roscoe was … I mean he was a young man.” He couldn’t have been older than mid-thirties.

She just stared at me with those unresponsive eyes and nodded, like all the emotion of the experience had left her. “I don’t entirely know. I came home late that night after working a long shift—I’m a nurse at the hospital, and I didn’t get here until after midnight.” She licked her lips. “Roscoe’s car was outside, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. The back door was unlocked, so I went out, figuring maybe he fell asleep on the back patio, under the umbrella.” If she’d had anything left, this was the part where she would have welled up with tears. Instead, she just kept talking in a flat voice. “I found him out there, scorched all to hell, no pulse, no respiration. He was cold.” She looked up at me. “I tried to … resuscitate, even though I knew he was gone. After … I don’t even know … an hour? It was like my brain kicked back in, like I was dealing with any other patient. He was long gone.”

“That’s a damned shame,” I said. “Just doesn’t make any sense that he should be gone. He was a good man.” He’d always been nice to me when we worked together.

“Yes,” she said, voice hollow. She blinked a little, then sniffed like she had been crying even though she hadn’t for a while, I guessed. “How long ago was the last time you worked with him?”

“Long time,” I said. “I haven’t even seen him lately. I didn’t even know where he was working now. Was he still on the line?”

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head, a little quiver of rueful excitement making its way out. “He got a promotion. He was being trained for something else, see.”

“Did he move up to line supervisor?” I hadn’t heard about it, but it could have happened. “Move into the office?”

“No,” she said.

I made a little frown at that. In the Cavanagh factory, there was a pretty clear path to advancement.

“He was being trained,” she said, “as a lab tech.”

That one furrowed my brow. “I didn’t even know Cavanagh had a lab down here.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “It was off-site, though. Roscoe was so excited when he got the promotion. Said they chose him, gave him a fifty percent raise.” Her fingers fell to the pearl and gold necklace. “He brought this home with him the day he told me. We were … planning on getting a new car now that he was on salary.” This caused her face to squinch with emotion in a way that telling about his death didn’t. Probably because now she was talking about their dreams for the future, and no one had asked about those like they had his death.

“It’s all right,” I said, and reached out to brush her hand with reassurance. “Please. We don’t have to talk about this any more.”

She slipped a little and then composed herself. She swallowed hard and held it all in. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

What do you say to that? The woman just lost her husband and she was putting on a brave face. “I am so sorry for your loss.”

She nodded. “It’s going to be tough without him.”

“I imagine it is,” I said and stood. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, I don’t suppose there is,” she said, looking up at me, eyes restored to their comfortable balance of apathy. I felt for her. I didn’t know what to do; if she’d been a close friend I would have given her a hug and told her to let it all out. But I was a stranger, a man who used to work with her husband. There was no way I could approach this that wouldn’t be desperately awkward for both of us. “Thank you for stopping by, Augustus Coleman.”

I nodded to her and headed for the door. I paused, wincing inside, not really wanting to get out before I asked that last, nagging question that was eating at me. “Shelia?” I turned to see her looking at me with as close to a quizzical expression as she could muster with her subdued emotions. “Where was this Cavanagh lab that Roscoe was working at?”

She thought about it for a moment. “I don’t rightly remember,” she finally decided, and I could tell it was eating at her. “I don’t know that he told me, just that it was a clean room and he was handling … samples and such. He had to take some classes so he could handle biological materials.” Her face creased slightly with grief. “He joked he’d just learn from me, because I already knew how to dispose of sharps and such.”

My first instinct was to freeze, because Edward Cavanagh himself had assured me this very morning—in an offhand comment, but still—that they didn’t a have any bioresearch divisions. Hadn’t he? It felt like a cold gut-punch, a chilling sensation that started at the stomach and spread through me, slow as a knife dragging across a frozen flank steak.

But I smiled at her, reassuring as I could. “Thank you. And I am so sorry for your loss.” And I excused myself to let the widow Marion grieve—or not, given her current state—in peace.

As it turned out, Cordell Weldon was not a particularly tough guy to find. Which worked for me, because I wasn’t necessarily convinced I needed to see him for the purposes of this investigation. If he’d been unlisted, tough to track down, shown up with an office in another state, I probably would have given that one up. ‘Why bother?’ would have been my mantra on that one. He just funded the shelter that the homeless victims came from, after all, and had had some aspersions cast on his good name by a drug dealer. None of that was necessarily anything other than a tangential connection to the case and an indicator that Darrick disliked his stance on something or another.

But when I performed a Google search, Cordell Weldon’s name, picture and even his office address came up in about 0.000000046 seconds, and since the address ended up mapping out about one mile from where I was standing, I figured what the hell. I headed straight for him and found a nice little three-story brick office building waiting for me with the doors open.

There was muscle waiting all around, by which I mean bodyguards in suits. I’d taken a few seconds to read the profile on the way to his office, and I remembered him now. Cordell Weldon was basically a local community organizer with big ambitions. Current city council member, likely future congressman, etc, etc. He had the bona fides, and I counted on the first page of the search results no fewer than three glowing pieces that wondered if he’d be appointed to a recently vacated senate seat. He hadn’t been, to the gushing disappointment of a fourth article that blamed the oppositional politics of Georgia's current governor.

I set down in front of the red brick office building under the watchful eyes of his bodyguards. They didn’t make any sudden moves, but they were eyeing me pretty heavy. Every single one of them looked like they’d played ball somewhere, and not one of them had the physique that indicated their sport had been soccer or basketball. They were brick walls, thick with muscle from more gym visits than I’d had hot meals in my life.