P. Parrish - South Of Hell

“You know Krazy Jim’s?”

“The burger place?”

“Yeah. Meet me there.”

Louis stepped out of the phone booth into a cold drizzle. He hurried across the street and through the stone archway leading into the cloistered confines of the old Law Quad.

He didn’t stop. Neither did the memories.

The cold marble floor of the dining hall where he usually ate alone. The cell-like feel of his dorm room. The sound of his roommate’s drunken snores that drove him to the quiet solitude of the Law Library’s reading room. There, under the fifty-foot vaulted ceiling, there, under the soft glow of the brass lamps, there, under the stained-glass weight of tradition, time seemed to stand still. There, in that vast Gothic cathedral of a place, the ache of loneliness was somehow lessened.

As he neared the western arch, his eyes went up to the old leaded windows of the Lawyers Club. It was where the law students lived. It was where he had so desperately wanted to be.

Once. Another lifetime ago.

He emerged onto State Street, heading west. On Division, he spotted the red awning of Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burgers. The windows were fogged over, blurring the sign that boasted “Cheaper Than Food.” Inside, a vapor of grease and smoke enveloped him.

Louis spotted a man in a gray raincoat at the front corner table. He was red-faced and beefy, with the kind of hard, darting eyes that could never belong to a college professor. The man stood up as Louis approached.

“Kincaid?”

“Yeah. You Shockey?”

“That I am.” When Shockey held out his hand, Louis caught the glint of his gold detective’s badge and a holstered automatic beneath the raincoat. Shockey’s handshake was hard, his hands rough. Not the hands of a detective who spent long hours at a desk.

“So,” Shockey said, “you remember me now that you’re looking at me?”

Louis took in the pockmarked but roughly handsome face with its coffee-colored eyes and chopped dark hair.

“No, I don’t. Sorry.”

“I remember you,” Shockey said. “I was there the first day you showed up in uniform. We all wanted to get a look at the poster boy.”

“What?”

“You know, the new cop of the 1980s. Someone who was-”

“Black?” Louis said.

Shockey stared at him, then broke into a crooked-tooth smile. “No, man,” he said. “Someone with a friggin’ college degree.”

Louis let the words just hang there until Shockey cleared his throat. “You hungry?”

The smell of frying onions made Louis’s stomach churn with hunger. “Yeah, I could use a bite,” he said.

“Let’s get in line, then,” Shockey said.

Shockey went to the counter and got a plastic tray. Louis followed suit.

“You know,” Shockey said, “when I looked you up, I was expecting to see attorney-at-law after your name. Kinda surprised to find out you weren’t nothing but a lousy peeper living in a cottage and working insurance crap.”

Louis dug a Coke out of the cooler and slid his tray behind Shockey’s.

“I heard you got kicked out of Michigan a few years back for screwing up some big case the state guys were working on,” Shockey said.

Louis stayed quiet.

“But I guess that just proves what I been saying all along,” Shockey continued. “Police work is all about instinct and guts. Either you got them or you don’t, and you can’t get them from a diploma.”

They had moved up to the griddle, where a big black woman in a white apron and a red head scarf was making hamburgers in a fog of steam.

“Gimme a quint egg on onion roll, Irma,” Shockey said.

The woman grabbed five golf balls of meat, slapped them onto the grill, and smashed them with her spatula. She cracked an egg next to the meat. Then she looked up at Louis.

“Cheeseburger with fries,” Louis said.

The woman pointed the spatula at him. “You need to order the fries first! And the cheese last!”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Shockey held up a hand. “He’s a virgin, Irma.”

The woman glared at Louis. “Don’t care if he’s a eunuch. Rules is rules.”

Shockey turned to Louis. “What do you want?”

Louis was silent.

“Damn it, what do you want?” Shockey said in a fierce whisper.

“Cheeseburger,” Louis said, staring at the woman with the spatula.

Shockey turned to the woman. “Double on kaiser, Irma.”

She scowled at Louis, slapped two balls onto the grill, and smashed them down.

“I wanted a cheeseburger,” Louis said to Shockey.

“Forget it.”

Shockey slid his tray toward the register, pulling out his wallet.

“What about my fries?” Louis asked.

“Forget them, too.”

A kid in a hairnet deposited two paper-wrapped lumps on their trays, and Shockey paid. They wove through the bodies to the table by the front window. Shockey slid into the wood bench, keeping his eyes on the window and the door. Louis had no choice but to balance his ass on the small wooden swivel chair. His eyes took in the grease-stained walls and battered old tables.

“Why do you come here?” Louis said.

Shockey nodded toward the greasy paper lump. “Try it.”

With a shake of his head, Louis unwrapped the paper and took a bite of the burger. It was delicious. Even without the cheese.

Shockey was still working on his five-patty monster with a fried egg by the time Louis finished his. He was trying to decide whether he wanted to square off again with the griddle woman but decided he would wait to eat dinner later with Joe.

He got a glance at his watch. If he got out of there in the next half-hour, he could still make Echo Bay by ten.

Shockey saw him. “You got somewhere to go?”

“No,” Louis said, wiping his hands with a paper napkin. “So, why don’t you tell me why I’m here?”

Shockey set his burger down and grabbed a napkin. “Like I told you on the phone,” he said, “it’s about a missing persons case. A twenty-four-year-old woman by the name of Jean Brandt was reported missing by her husband December 4, 1980. A BOLO was put out on her ’71 Ford Falcon, which disappeared with her, according to the husband. A week later, when you were on patrol, you spotted the car parked at the Amtrak station down on Depot Street.”

Louis tried to bring the memory back, and it came slowly. It had been an icy night crammed with nuisance calls and fender-benders. He had a habit of rifling through the BOLOs and alerts, hoping to break the boredom of the shift. The old red Falcon was parked in the last space at the train station, pillowed with snow, one of the tires flat. He didn’t remember much else except the license plate. It was hanging, as if someone had tried to take it off but had given up after stripping the screw.

But one memory was clear. The plate had not been from Washtenaw County. It had been from Livingston County, north of Ann Arbor. Which meant that the missing woman’s disappearance would have been Livingston County’s jurisdiction, regardless of where her car was found. So the only way Shockey would be involved now was if her body had turned up in Ann Arbor.

“Where’d you find her?” Louis asked.

Shockey cleared his throat. “What?”

“The body. You guys found it, right?”

“No,” Shockey said.

“What about these new leads? Do you have a witness or something besides the car that connects her to Ann Arbor?”

Shockey pushed his tray away. “Not exactly.”

“So, why are you pursuing a cold case that doesn’t even belong to you?”

Shockey took a moment to grab another napkin and wipe his face. “I’m kind of in charge of the cold cases. This is one that always stuck in my craw. I met the husband, Owen Brandt, when he tried to pick up the Falcon. He was a real scumbag, and he said then he thought his wife had run off on him. My gut always told me he killed her and left the car here to make us think she left the state.”