Her Last Scream (16 page)

In the too-early morning I drove a sullen Harry to Amarillo Airport to catch a pre-dawn flight on a regional airline. When I returned the temperature was already pushing past a sultry eighty degrees. Cruz was lounging beside the motel pool in a loose blue-and-red Hawaiian shirt and green calf-length pants that seemed made of overlapping pockets. The ensemble was topped by a broad-brimmed straw hat. I’d stopped on the way and picked up coffees at a Starbucks. I set a cup on the table beside Cruz, took a seat. She nodded thanks.

We sat in silence and studied the tangled morning traffic on the highway. A service road was on the far side, lined with a laundromat, pawnshop, gas station, junk store, accountants’ office and a couple of restaurants.

“I had no other choice,” Cruz finally said, staring across the street.

“I know,” I said, also looking forward, like we could address the subject if we didn’t look at one another, a phone conversation sans phones.

“Is he a good cop,” she asked, “Nautilus? I mean, usually?”

“The best there is.”

“Why’d he take an assignment with his niece as killer bait?”

“It just happened.”

We stopped talking as an ambulance wove through the traffic, its siren so piercingly loud I couldn’t arrange my thoughts. I imagined Harry trying to work the case with that kind of noise in his head, couldn’t.

Cruz said, “I’m finding it hard to believe Nautilus is a pro when he’s not an emotional wreck.”

“There’s a barbecue joint across the highway,” I said, pointing to a red barn-shaped building with smoke rising from a brick pit to the side. “I need real food.”

“Barbecue for breakfast?”

“Sometimes it’s necessary.”

“You gonna tell me tales of derring-do?” Cruz said. “Is that the plan?”

“Yep.”

“Think we can look at one another over there?”

Harry Nautilus landed in Mobile at eight-fifteen and was standing in front of Lieutenant Tom Mason a half-hour later, explaining he’d been worried owing to the youth and the slender experience of officer Reinetta Early. Nautilus knew Mason was a sucker for contrition, especially with an explanation.

“I allowed emotion to overwhelm judgment, Lieutenant,” Nautilus said, “recalling a couple times when I was nearly killed because of one bad split-second decision in a day where I made fifty good ones. I couldn’t get the mistakes out of my head.”

The lanky lieutenant thought about it, tipping back the ubiquitous Stetson. “You and Carson worked with her. How did she do there?”

“The kid was first-rate,” Nautilus had to admit.

“And you were still worried?”

Nautilus looked at his feet as if embarrassed. He also knew Tom Mason was old-school Southern. It didn’t mean thinking of women as less than men, but a certain protectiveness was rooted in the culture and still powerful among men of a certain age, about that of Lieutenant Mason.

“I, uh, maybe …” Nautilus stammered.

“Maybe what, Harry?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t say it, given the times and all.”

Mason nodded toward the closed door. “It’s just you and me and the wallpaper. Out with it, Harry.”

“Maybe it would have been different if officer Early was a guy, sir. I know it sounds sexist or whatever, but …”

Mason sighed. “Yeah, Harry. I can understand that, even if I’m not supposed to. Jeez, women cops on the front of the front lines … I can’t imagine how I’d feel if it was one of my daughters. Anyway, the case’ll be over soon enough, right? Either officer Early will spot a breach in the system or not.”

Nautilus cleared his throat. “I know I got too close up there, Tom. But in Mobile it’s all standard police work, shoe leather and analysis.”

“You’re saying?”

“I want Sally and me to work hard from this end. Carson thinks squeezing down here might pop rivets in the underground tunnel.”

It was an exaggeration, but it got Mason’s Stetson bobbing.

“I can go along with that, Harry. Nail the bastard.”

A half-hour later, Nautilus and Sally Hargreaves were cruising through Larry Krebbs’s neighborhood, a slice of middle-class suburbia. They saw a large silver Beamer in Krebbs’s driveway, the vanity plate stating BRMLY1.

“Looks like Bromley’s having a consultation with his client,” Hargreaves said.

Nautilus pulled in behind the BMW and the pair exited. The knock was answered by Krebbs, wearing khakis and a polo shirt and polishing the head of a putter. A bag of clubs rested against the wall, ready for a round.

“What now?” he said.

“Where’s your lawyer, Mr Krebbs?” Nautilus asked, hoping maybe the mouthpiece had just choked to death on some foreign substance – Truth, perhaps.

“He’s watching stock quotes on the Bloomberg channel. Nathaniel!” Krebbs barked over his shoulder. “It’s one of those cops, the black one.” Krebbs looked through Hargreaves like she was too lowly to mention.

“I heard about the upcoming suit, Mr Krebbs,” Nautilus said. “You’re now missing Lainie? You didn’t seem concerned the last time we talked.”

“Because you were harassing me. I miss her more than anything.” Krebbs shot a look behind him, yelled “Nathaniel!”

“Harassing you, Mr Krebbs? How did –”

“You and that other moron, acting like goddamn storm troopers and –”

“That’s enough, Lawrence.” Bromley said, appearing beside his client, Tweedledee to Krebbs’s golfing Tweedledum: burgundy slacks, striped golf shirt: ready to tee up. Both men were wearing street shoes and Nautilus realized all Krebbs’s crap about keeping the carpet clean had been an exercise in control.

Bromley studied Hargreaves. “Well, well … what’s this?”

“A thing is a what, Mr Bromley,” Hargreaves replied evenly. “A person is a who. Who I am is Detective Sally Hargreaves, Missing Persons.”

Bromley raised an amused eyebrow. “Who’s lost?”

“I am, Mister Bromley,” Nautilus said. “Last I was here, Mr Krebbs was happy his wife had left him. In keeping with that spirit, you were referring to Lainie Krebbs as a drunk and a woman who –”

Bromley waved the words away. “Larry was overwhelmed by emotions that day. He had problems with his wife and made a couple bad decisions owing to his fear she would leave him. But the Krebbses were very much in love and working out their problems.”

“They were seeing a counselor, then?” Nautilus said. “You have a name?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss personal matters, Detective. Then Mrs Krebbs – a confused woman, perhaps even clinically bipolar – got ensnared in the anti-male propaganda espoused by the hardcore radical feminists down at the women’s center.”

Hargreaves jaw dropped. “Hardcore radical …”

“They brainwashed Lainie Krebbs into thinking she was endangered and put her into an uncontrolled system that led to her violent death. Whatever these women are doing in the dark needs more oversight and scrutiny –”

“Are you nuts, Bromley?” Hargreaves snapped. “That’s exactly what will kill it.”

“… before any more women are destroyed by this secret society, this sisterhood of death.”

“What the hell do you mean by sisterhood of –”

Nautilus edged Hargreaves back, shooting her a
shut-up
glance. She stormed toward the cruiser. Bromley watched with a satisfied smile.

“Is there any reason for you to be here, outside of harassing my client, Detective?”

“I wanted to tell you another body turned up. At a park in Utah. There are some similarities with Ms Krebbs’s murder and the one in Denver.”

“When did this death occur?”

“Several days ago, nothing exact.”

“More proof my client has no – repeat, no – involvement in these matters. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Is there anything else?”

“No.”

Krebbs pushed to the fore and angled his head toward Sally Hargreaves, now simmering in the cruiser. “Is that your new partner?”

“Why?”

Krebbs winked. “Best carry some heavy-duty tampons in the car, Detective. She seems permanently on the rag.”

The door closed. Nautilus walked slowly back to the car, head canted at the thinker’s angle. The pair drove away. “Something’s itching in my head …” Nautilus frowned. “Bromley’s a hotshot lawyer, mover and shaker, right? Did so well he quit the law firm and now picks and chooses cases. Lives in a hoity-toity neighborhood, from what I hear. He’s a star.”

“No, Harry, he’s an ass-teroid. But go on.”

“Larry Krebbs, on the other hand, is an antisocial lump who makes less than he should, lives in a tract house in average-ville, beats on women and is, in general, a failed human being. Why would they be golfing buddies?”

“Maybe they both love golf,” Sal said after a few seconds of thought. “I know a guy in the motor pool who can’t string together five words without a double negative, and he golfs with bank presidents and the like, all because he’s good at smacking that little white ball back and forth.”

“I guess that’s it,” Nautilus said, not sounding convinced.

“Hardcore radical feminists, secret society, sisterhood of death?” I repeated after Harry phoned to relay his recent encounter with Bromley and Krebbs. “It’s a preview, bro,” I told him. “Sound bites he’ll use when the case hits the media. Remember when Bromley was defending the hacker who cracked into the credit-card accounts?”

I heard the chair creak as Harry leaned back. “Yeah. He called the little thief a victim of curiosity, a cyber fall guy for societal ills and the sacrificial lamb of conspicuous consumption.”

“You remember what happened there, right?” I asked.

“The larcenous little pissant got off with a wrist slap and community service. He probably worked it off teaching PlayStation to kids at community centers.”

I found it interesting that Harry recalled the cyber-perp as a kid. The guy was in his mid-twenties, a troubled man-child with a genius for computers. But Bromley had presented the hacker as a wayward teen who had simply taken a misstep, and the image had stuck. Bromley, love him or hate him, was damned good at what he did.

“Take the hacker case,” I said, “double it, square it, cube the result. That’s what you’re gonna see when Bromley pulls the trigger on the women’s center suit. I figure this case will summon the national cameras and keep clients rolling in until Nate shuffles off the mortal coil.”

“Not a moment too soon,” Harry said in lieu of goodbye.

I was wondering how much even Bromley could squeeze from non-profit women’s centers when my phone rang. I grabbed it, eyes wide at the name on the screen.

“REIN!”

“Hi, Carson. Only got a minute. I’m at –”

“We know, Victoria Miles. Great job with the tag.”

“Miss Miles is outside watering the prickly pears or whatever. I’m on her landline, watching from a second-story window. How’s Harry? I swear when he passed by us I nearly –”

“Harry went back to Mobile,” I said, as falsely cheerful as a game-show host. “He’s gonna work with Sally. Cruz is staying on the case full time and we’ll be nearby twenty-four-seven, no lapses in manpower.”

A long pause told me Rein saw through my plastic exuberance. “It wasn’t voluntary, right? Harry got pulled for being too protective?”

I dropped the smiley voice. “Harry let emotion cloud judgment a couple times, Rein. I’ve been there myself.”

“It’s my fault. I should have done more to assure him I could handle myself.”

“Doesn’t work that way, Miss Early. Anyway, Cruz and I are right down the street from the Hotel Miles.”

“Vicky Miles told me a story that had me crying. She’s a hero, Carson. All these people are heroes. Want to hear a sad story?”

“Sure.” Rein could have recited the phone book and I’d have listened, happy to hear her voice. She told me the tale of Nina and the dentist and the scuzz-bag lawyer, adding, “Miz Miles is no threat unless she made up that story – and it was real and horrible as it could be.”

“Don’t get cozy, Rein,” I cautioned. “For all you know, the killer lives next door and waits for Miles to bring women home. Everything’s possible, never forget that.”

“I feel lousy about what I’m doing, Carson. Lying to good people. Taking up time that could be used to help real women in trouble.”

“Four women are known dead, Rein. You’re the most important woman in the system right now.”

“Four? When did –”

“A woman jumped into the system in Pittsburgh. She was found dead in east Utah a few days ago. It was our guy, a grim death tableau. We’re not sure how long he held her after she’d been grabbed, only that he kept her prisoner before, uh …”

“Gotcha. Any reason why Utah?”

“We think the victim was trying to get to Baja California. A line drawn from Pittsburgh to Baja –”

“Cuts across Colorado,” Rein finished, as fast in geography as everything else. “Listen …” she added.

“What?”

“If I get out of the system and haven’t seen anything, I’m going back in. We can change the route a bit, maybe. Go in at Birmingham and say I’m heading to Utah or wherever moves me through the danger zone. That way I can … Uh-oh, looks like the watering is over, Carson. Gotta go put on my traveling face. Tell Harry I love him and to stop worrying. I’m gonna be fine.”

I passed the news to Harry. He and Sally were in the MPD conference room dedicated to the case, so I jacked my computer into the wall and set my little camera on the table, the pair down south sending vid-feed my way. The MPD conference-room scene had a herky-jerky motion and was tinted orange, as if Harry and Sal were in a citrus fog. The wall behind my colleagues was a collage of case information. Photos of dead bodies centered the wall, the pinions around which all else flowed.

“Nothing on the butterfly Lady in Mobile?” I asked, showing up on the computer screen in front of my colleagues.

Sal shook her head, or maybe it was the video. “I check national missing-person reports three times a day. No one’s missing her, which is odd. Dr Peltier also shifted her age estimate from late twenties to mid-thirties.”

“Why the initial discrepancy?”

“The Doc thinks butterfly Lady was seriously into health and nutrition. A runner or rock climber, triathelete, something like that. The body tone made her appear younger. Listen, Carson, I want to go to the Mobile women’s center and show photos of butterfly Lady.”

“With Rein in the system? You’ll tip them off to our operation.”

“I won’t tell them we’ve got an op going on. I’ll play it like shooting in the dark.”

“Opinion, Harry?”

He surprised me. “When Rein gets out in a few days, and if she’s found nothing, we go to the center and start working from the outside in.”

Sal nodded, not happy, but outvoted. “So what’s the update on Bromley?” I asked.

“No movement. But the sword is hanging.”

“Krebbs?” I asked.

Harry leaned forward. “He was in the Keys when the missus was killed, no way around it. You know he’s a big golfing buddy of Bromley?”

“Krebbs?” I pictured the misanthropic, misogynistic simian standing beside the nattily dressed and impeccably coiffed Bromley. I knew a lot of lawyers that repped nasty types, but that didn’t mean they socialized with them.

“Odd, right?” Harry said.

“I guess Bromley expects to make a haul off Krebbs’s case, wants to keep his golden goose close.”

We were reviewing details for about the fortieth time when my phone rang. The ID said VICKY. Victoria Miles’s house, Rein on the landline again.

“I’m getting ready to leave,” Rein said. “Miz Miles went to pull the hogmobile from the garage. You guys ready to give chase?”

“I’ll grab Miz Cruz and we’ll be in your tailwind.”

“My phone doesn’t have enough juice to power a jumping bean. It’ll be text from here, but not many.” I heard something in Rein’s voice, different, less of the detached calm and more of a quiet intensity. It gave me an eerie sense of déjà vu until I realized Rein was using a tone I’d heard in Harry’s voice when a case was turning into a crusade.

“Got it,” I said. “Any idea where you’re going?”

“They never say. But I’m hoping for Casa Rick, the weirdo who takes pictures of eyes. Didn’t Gail get to him about mid-point in her journey?”

“He was protector four out of the eight Gail stayed with on her journey to the Gulf.” Finding Rick might reveal all we needed. A police record could let us drag him in under suspicion, find out where he’d been the last few weeks. Ricky-boy had smelled bad from the git-go.

“If this trip doesn’t pan out, I’m going back inside the system, Carson. Until the perp is nailed. We’re cool there, right?”

“Stay safe, Rein,” I said, avoiding an answer. “We’re a half-step behind you.”

Two streets distant and with field glasses to my eyes, I watched the garage door open at the Victoria Miles household. “Here we go,” I said to Cruz. “They’re out of the driveway and heading east.”

Cruz dropped the van in gear and we were back in pursuit. “There are only a couple highways heading east or southeast. Nice to have a fire-engine-red Escalade to track. I swear that thing glows.”

“Harry and I once had to follow a silver Corolla from Mobile to Pensacola,” I said, setting the glasses in my lap.

“Ouch,” Cruz said, knowing how many silver Corollas cruised the road, resembling every other silver compact from a few hundred feet behind.

“Two dimwits rented the car to move a few thousand hits of meth, we dubbed them Beavis and Butthead. B and B stopped at a Mickey D’s for food, backed into the spot. Harry was getting tired of picking them out in traffic so he did the drive-through, got a fish sandwich and fifty packs of mustard.”

“Fifty?”

“The drive-through lady gives him a look and Harry says, ‘Lawd miss, I jus’ loves my mustard.’ So he gets about a pound of mustard in those little squeezy things. Beavis and Butthead are just getting into their chow. We park beside the Corolla and Harry paints the rear of the trunk with a foot-round smear of yellow mustard. Then he poked eyes and a mouth in the goo.”

“A smiley face, oh my God.”

“You could see that happy trunk a half-mile away.”

Cruz laughed, a high and pretty sound. “My favorite is the time Nautilus got the perp to throw back his Frisbee and snagged the unsuspecting guy’s fingerprints. That was classic. How come I never saw that Harry Nautilus?”

“Maybe you can visit us down Mobile way. I have a spare room for guests. Won’t cost you a cent to stay at the Carson Hilton.”

She didn’t say no, a good start. Cruz and I were getting along nicely, considering eighty per cent of our consciousness was focused on giving Rein the right amount of chain.

“They’re ramping toward Interstate 40,” Cruz said. “We’re going back into Oklahoma, thenceforth into Arkansas or Louisiana, I expect. We’re stair-stepping toward the Bama coast.” She paused, dainty nose sniffing the air. “Do I smell burning rubber?”

A red light began blinking on the dash. A buzzer sounded.