P. Parrish - The Little Death

The cicadas stopped screeching. The quiet flowed in.

“See anything useful?” Mel asked.

“Not really,” Louis said, his eyes scanning every inch of the fences and sand. “Just some rusted chains hanging on a gate.”

They went into the next section, but it was the same as the first. A narrow passageway led to another pen. It was a maze of rotting wood, weeds, and sand. Then, suddenly, the space opened. They were in a large pen, maybe thirty feet square, with a small listing lean-to tucked in a corner. Another ribbon of limp yellow tape hung from the fence.

Louis went to the center. It looked like a portion of the sand had been scooped out with a shovel.

“This is where he was killed,” Louis said.

“How can you tell?” Mel asked.

The sun was starting its descent. Louis figured Mel couldn’t make out any details now. “It looks like the crime-scene guys might have taken soil samples.”

Louis scanned the ground. It had rained during the last week, so there was nothing left of the prints Barberry had mentioned. There didn’t even seem to be any evidence of blood.

Louis stood still, listening. No sounds now. Even the birds had retreated to their night roosts. There was no feeling, either. And he had always been able to get a feeling about a murder scene in the past. It was nothing he could put his finger on, nothing he could articulate. And he never told anyone about it. But he had learned to trust the weird vibration that sometimes came when he stood in the place where a person had taken his last breath.

But there was nothing here. Except for a strange feeling of something old and buried. Like an abandoned grave or-

“I can’t see it.”

Mel had spoken in a whisper. Louis turned to him.

“Can’t see what?” Louis asked.

“Reggie. I can’t see a guy like him coming out here and whacking off someone’s head. A guy like him wouldn’t even know this place was here. Shit, we barely found it.”

Louis was quiet. He had been thinking the same thing. But how much did Mel really know about this Kent guy?

Louis went over to where Mel was and waited until Mel had lit his cigarette. “What are we doing here, Mel?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Reggie Kent. Why do you care what happens to a guy like that?”

“A guy like what?”

Louis was silent. A hot current started up his neck.

“Gay,” Mel said. “You can’t even say it, for crissake.”

“That’s not-”

“And you’re wondering how I even know a guy like that.”

The way Mel had drawn out the last two words made Louis fall silent again. Mel took a long drag on his cigarette.

“I met Reggie about fifteen years ago, when I was a sergeant with Miami PD,” Mel said. “One of my guys called me on an assault. It was Thanksgiving, and the only reason I was working that night was because I switched with a guy who wanted the day off to be with his family. When I got there, I saw Reggie sitting on the curb, all beat up. The uniform pulled me aside and said the two guys who attacked him were in a bar across the street. The uniform wanted my permission to no-action it.”

Mel blew out a long stream of smoke. “The uniform said it wasn’t worth the paperwork to go arrest them.”

“What did you do?” Louis asked.

“I told the uniforms to leave,” Mel said. “Kent said he didn’t have anyone he could call, so I drove him to Jackson Memorial.”

Mel tossed the cigarette to the sand and ground out the butt with his heel.

“I went back to check up on him the next day,” he said. “Turned out he had a concussion. Almost lost an eye. He was in the hospital for a week. I went back and saw him a couple of times. The nurse told me he never had any visitors. No family, either.”

Louis watched as Mel worked his jaw. It was the same agitated gesture he had done back at the sheriff’s office, just before he told Barberry to “knock off that shit.”

“So, you and Kent,” Louis began. “You became friends?”

Mel shook his head. “Nah. But at Christmas, he sent me a fruit basket at the station.”

Louis smiled.

Mel smiled, too. “Yeah, I took some shit for that.”

“But you never saw him?”

“Nope. But every year, he sent a Christmas card to the station.”

“How’d he find you after you quit?” Louis asked.

“Beats me. Somebody at the station probably told him I had hired on with Fort Myers PD. My home number’s in the phone book.” Mel took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I was shocked as hell when he called me. Our paths crossed once a long time ago. That’s all.”

The sun was setting, great streaks of red. Louis wanted to start back so they wouldn’t be caught out there when the dark came. But Mel had pulled out the Zippo and another Kool. The lighter flared and snapped closed with a sharp clink . Mel’s face was lost in the dusk.

Again, the question came to Louis: What were they doing here? What was he doing here? Swann and even Barberry looked down their noses at him because he didn’t have a badge. But he was used to that. He was even used to being the only black guy in a town of whites. What he wasn’t used to was feeling like some kind of insect because he wasn’t wearing the right jacket.

Face it, Kincaid, this isn’t about Reggie Kent. It’s about you not feeling like you fit in.

“I know you don’t want to take this case,” Mel said.

Louis looked at him. Mel was a silhouette, the tip of his cigarette glowing.

“I’m just not sure there’s a case here, Mel,” Louis said. “I’m not sure we can be any good to this Kent guy.”

“Is it because he’s gay? That’s not like you to-”

“No,” Louis said. “That’s not it.”

“What’s bothering you, then?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s bothering me.”

Mel took a long drag on the cigarette. “Something’s eating at you, Rocky. It’s been going on for a while now. You aren’t a barrel of laughs even in the best of times, but lately-”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You know what I mean.” Mel’s cigarette glowed in the dark. “Is it Joe?”

Louis was glad Mel couldn’t see his face. Truth was, it was Joe, in part. He hadn’t seen her in months, and they had barely talked on the phone since Thanksgiving. He loved her, but he had the feeling now that they were drifting, and he wasn’t sure anymore it was toward each other.

“All right,” Mel said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

They were quiet for a long time. A cricket started up nearby. Louis could barely make out the yellow crime tape now.

“I want to try to help Reggie,” Mel said. “And you know I can’t do this alone anymore.”

Louis heard the catch in Mel’s voice, knew how hard it was for him to admit that.

“Let’s give it a day, all right?” Mel said. “See how far we get.”

Louis shut his eyes. No vibration. No feeling. No sense of what had happened in this strange place. His intuition was telling him only to get out of there.

“Let’s go,” Louis said. “You better take my arm.”

Mel put a hand on Louis’s sleeve, and Louis led him out of the darkness.

Louis voted for the Motel 8 in West Palm Beach. But Mel overruled him on grounds that if they intended to infiltrate Bizarro World, they had to be in the thick of it. A call to Reggie led them to the Brazilian Court, a couple of blocks off Worth Avenue. But when Louis discovered the rooms started at $250 a night, they retreated to Ta-boo to regroup. Yuba the bartender suggested they try a place nearby called the Palm Beach Historic Inn.

The small hotel had one double left, a Spartan but immaculate room with twin beds. It was $85 a night, but it was right next door to the police station. There was the bonus of a cozy little bar in the lobby.