P. Parrish - South Of Hell

“When was this?”

“June 1980.”

“How long after that first meeting did you start an affair?”

Shockey’s jaw ground in thought and maybe a little embarrassment. Again, Louis let him have his time.

“A month,” Shockey said finally. “But it was hard to be together. Brandt kept a tight leash on her and expected her home exactly three hours after sundown. If she was late, she got beat.”

“So how’d you make time?”

“About an hour before dark, if she hadn’t sold all her stuff, I’d buy it, and then we’d do a quick load-up and head for the motel.”

Louis glanced around. The rain had thinned to a fine spray, blurring the land for miles, leaving everything obscured in fog. He wanted to suggest that they sit in the car to finish this conversation, but Shockey seemed more unguarded, as if he felt he was giving Jean Brandt more respect by telling her story out here in this godforsaken place.

“What about when summer ended?” Louis asked. “She wouldn’t have come to market then. Did the affair continue into winter?”

“She could only get away a few times after October,” Shockey said. “She told Owen she had female problems and had to see a specialist in Ann Arbor. Bastard never questioned that, didn’t want to hear anything about her problems, so he let her go.”

“You said you met at motels,” Louis said. “Why not go to your place?”

Shockey sighed. “I was married. I had a kid.”

“So that’s why you didn’t come forward when she disappeared,” Louis said. “You didn’t want your wife to find out.”

Shockey sniffed and pushed his wet hair off his forehead. He was staring at the house again. “That, and I didn’t want to lose my job,” he said. “We had — hell, we still have it, but no one pays much attention to it now — we had a morals clause in our job description. I would’ve been fired.”

“Not to mention you might have been considered a suspect in her disappearance.”

“Yup.”

“Why now?” Louis asked. “Why open this after nine years?”

“Brandt’s been in prison in Ohio for the last seven years. He beat up a woman and threw her out of a car,” Shockey said. “He was paroled a week ago.”

Louis was looking at the farmhouse.

“He almost killed that woman. I know he killed Jean,” Shockey said. “And I am not going to just stand by and let him kill again.”

“You’ve let this get personal,” Louis said. “I don’t need to tell you that’s not right.”

“I’m older than you,” Shockey said. “And the older you get, the heavier the shit becomes, the shit you didn’t take care of when you were younger. You live under it, thinking it will go away by itself. But it doesn’t.”

Louis was quiet.

“And no matter how much good you do later, it never makes things right.”

“Did you plant the bra in the trunk of the Falcon?” Louis asked.

“Yeah.”

“Who did it belong to?”

“My ex-wife.”

“Whose blood was on it?”

“Mine. I got the idea almost a year ago,” Shockey said. “I knew Jean and I had the same blood type, and I cut myself and bled on it and then left it in my backyard for months trying to make it look old.”

“And the ten grand and my expenses to come here. Where was that money going to come from?”

“My retirement fund.”

“You’re a real piece of work, Detective.”

Shockey faced him, his eyes as empty as the farmhouse’s windows. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’d do it again if I thought I could get away with it.”

Louis shook his head. This case was about as cold as they came. Not one shred of evidence or a viable lead.

“Kincaid,” Shockey said, “Owen Brandt abandoned this place like a month after Jean went missing. But he never hired anyone to work this farm for him, and he never put it up for sale. Why do you think that is?”

“You think Brandt buried her out here?” Louis asked.

“I know he did.”

“How big is this place?” Louis asked.

“Sixty acres.”

Louis took a long look around. There was nothing but a cold, lonely grayness as far as he could see and he thought about the possibility that Jean Brandt’s bones were buried out there somewhere, forgotten by everyone but Shockey.

“Are you going to help me?” Shockey asked.

Louis met Shockey’s eyes. But his mind was churning backward a few years. Kneeling in the sand in Florida, digging a hole with his hands to bury a piece of evidence, the only thing he could do to bring justice to a dead girl. He did understand. He understood something else, too: what it was like to love a woman so much you’d do almost anything for her.

“I’ll help you, Detective,” Louis said. “But it will be my way. Are we clear?”

“Yeah,” Shockey said. “We’re clear.”

The soft knocking came through to his ears like the tap-tap-tap of a hammer. The sound lay tangled in a dream he was having about fixing the air conditioner in his cottage during a hurricane. The dream was a strange kind of paranormal slide show with a parade of characters he hadn’t seen in years. Some jock buddy from high school, an old bearded professor, and a girl who had laughed when he asked for a date.

He opened his eyes with the sense that those same people were there in the motel room with him, but there was no one. Just darkness and a glow of neon against the curtains.

The knock came again.

Had to be some drunk kid looking for a leftover keg. Louis shoved back the blanket, flipped on the bedside lamp, and stumbled to the door. The fluorescent light in the hall blinded him.

“Look, I told you guys-”

Then she came into focus.

Pale face with chiseled cheekbones, thin lips the color of peaches, and a mane of brown hair, not pulled back in her usual ponytail but down around the collar of her rain-beaded black leather jacket. She had a.45 automatic clipped onto her belt.

“Joe.”

She glanced down at his boxer shorts, then raised a brow, amused at his shock to find her at his door at five a.m. Then she put a hand behind his neck to pull him to her for a hard kiss. The kind that had been building during the four-hour drive down from Echo Bay.

He broke away first. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Mel called me and told me you were going to stick around here and help this Detective Shockey, so I asked Mike for a few days off and came on down.”

“Mel called you?” He blinked, not yet fully awake.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?” she asked.

“Of course I am. Come here.”

He pulled her to him this time and shut the door. In a clumsy dance of turns and wet kisses, he walked her backward to the bed. She dropped her purse and the envelope she was carrying, and they fell onto the bed.

Her arms circled his neck, and for the next few seconds, they wrapped themselves in each other. She worked his boxers off, but he was having a harder time with her leather jacket and the stubborn snap on her snug jeans.

“Wait, wait,” she said, breathless. “I’ll do it.”

Joe stood up, unclipped the gun, and began to undress. Louis reached down to pick up her purse and the envelope to set them aside. He noticed the writing on the front of the envelope: BRANDT/JEAN AND OWEN.

He looked at Joe. Her back was to him as she peeled off her blouse. “What is this?” he asked.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, just some research I did for you.”

He unclasped the envelope and pulled out the papers. The top sheet was a copy of the missing persons bulletin Ann Arbor PD had sent out nine years ago. Under that were a few newspaper clippings from various southeastern Michigan newspapers that covered the story, then a six-sheet compilation of Owen Brandt’s criminal record.