Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

‘Jesus,’ said Griffin.

‘They don’t want a murder investigation down here,’ McKenzie concluded. ‘But we knew that already.’

Griffin felt the lassitude begin to descend. It would be easier to surrender the case to Jurel Cade, and permit him to produce a simulacrum of an inquiry. Maybe there would be no more dead girls. Perhaps whoever killed Donna Lee Kernigan had sated himself with her. But instead Griffin said:

‘To hell with what they want or don’t want.’

‘My sentiments exactly. What about this Parker?’

‘I’m going to do my best to persuade him to stay.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ said Griffin, ‘I think he knows a lot about killing.’

25

Parker sat in Evan Griffin’s office, occupying a chair that rested unevenly on the floor, although whether through a fault in the chair or the surface, he could not say. His wallet, phone, and car keys lay on the desk in front of the chief. Griffin had risen to shake Parker’s hand after he was escorted into the office by Knight, and invited him to sit, but had said nothing else since then. He remained slouched in his chair, his hands folded over his small paunch, his right index finger tapping a slow regular cadence, carefully regarding the man opposite him. If he expected Parker to break the impasse, or begin showing obvious signs of discomfort – the foibles of the chair or floor apart – he was destined to be disappointed. Parker had grown used to stillness and quietude, and days could pass without his conversing with anyone but the dead. All his turmoil was within.

Finally, Griffin spoke.

‘Why didn’t you tell us who you were?’

‘I did.’

‘I think,’ said Griffin, ‘that you might have expanded a little further on the subject.’

‘And what would I have said?’

What indeed? Griffin had not considered the question in his way. How could this man have explained to a stranger the nature of the tragedy that had befallen him? Would he even have wanted to do so? In his position, Griffin thought perhaps that he, too, would have opted to say nothing at all.

‘I don’t know, but enough to avoid spending a night in a cell.’

‘I had to spend the night somewhere,’ said Parker, ‘and your cell was less depressing than my room. Incidentally, were you the one that searched it?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you’re going to make a habit of it, you ought to learn how to pick a lock.’

‘I’ll add it to the list of life skills I haven’t yet managed to acquire, including forbearance.’

Parker watched a truck pass, its semi-trailer loaded with logs. Fragments of bark spilled into the air before falling to earth like dying moths.

‘I’d really like to leave your town now,’ he said.

‘Why did you come here in the first place?’

‘You read the file in my room. I think you understand.’

‘Either you’re on a crusade,’ said Griffin, ‘or you’re trying to find whoever killed your wife and child. My guess is the latter. You’re interested in murders involving mutilation and display, which is what drew you to Cargill, and the Hartley case.’

‘Not only hers, because there was also Estella Jackson to consider. But yes, that’s about the size of it.’

‘You’re aware that we found another body this morning, murdered in a similar fashion to those two young women?’

‘I heard. If someone had investigated the Hartley killing properly, the latest girl might not be dead.’

Griffin noted the phrasing of the reply, its avoidance of any explicit ascription of blame, even if the imputation was clear.

‘Do you understand how things work in this county?’ he said.

‘As far as I can tell, nothing works in this county.’

Griffin didn’t bother to contradict him. Burdon County functioned, but not in a fashion comprehensible to outsiders, or those who failed to appreciate the relationship between poverty and pragmatism.

‘Jurel Cade, whom you’ve met, is the chief investigator for the Burdon County Sheriff’s Office, and therefore also for the county itself,’ said Griffin. ‘He decides what cases get investigated and prosecuted, aided by the coroner, Loyd Holt, who’s in Jurel’s pocket and does whatever he’s told. Any request for outside assistance – such as from the state police – has to go through the sheriff’s office. This department has autonomy to conduct inquiries of its own, up to and including cases of homicide, but it doesn’t have the resources to mount large-scale criminal investigations. We don’t even have a detective. Patricia Hartley’s body was discovered beyond the jurisdictional boundary of the Cargill Police Department, and therefore her case devolved to the sheriff’s office and Jurel Cade.’

‘Who then did nothing about it.’

‘That’s not entirely correct. I believe Jurel may have asked a question or two about Hartley’s movements, and signed off on some paperwork.’

‘My mistake,’ said Parker. ‘I meant to say “less than nothing.”’

Griffin let it go. Arguing with this man would do no good, especially when all that he was saying was accurate.

‘As of this morning,’ Griffin continued, ‘we have another victim, same MO. The girl’s name was Donna Lee Kernigan. She was seventeen years old. This time, it’s definitely in our jurisdiction. Jurel may continue to dispute that, but he’ll be wasting his breath. So we intend to investigate, and try to find the one that killed her.’

‘I wish you luck,’ said Parker. ‘Now I’m going to take my possessions and continue on my way.’

‘We need assistance,’ said Griffin. ‘Cargill has suffered just eight homicides in the last fifteen years: three of them were domestic, one was the result of a mistimed punch in a bar fight, and one was a hit-and-run. In each of those last five cases, the culprit was apprehended within twenty-four hours. In two of them, he was still at the scene when our officers arrived, and the investigative process didn’t take much longer than the killings themselves. The other three murders remain unsolved. One of them is that of an elderly woman named Lucille Vail at her home about four years ago. Her husband, Gene, went missing at the same time, and later turned up hanged from a tree. He was our only suspect. The second is the death of Estella Jackson, of which you’re aware, since you had a copy of her case file among your possessions. The third is Donna Lee Kernigan.’

‘What about Patricia Hartley?’

‘Patricia Hartley’s death was officially determined to be accidental.’

‘By whom?’

‘The county coroner.’

‘She had sticks inserted into her mouth and vagina.’

‘She was found at the bottom of a rocky slope. The coroner decided that any injuries she received resulted from her fall.’

‘She was naked.’

‘It was speculated that narcotics might have been involved, but the coroner decided that, on balance, this was unlikely.’

‘Did the autopsy results suggest that?’

‘There was no autopsy. The coroner has the authority to decide whether or not an autopsy is required. In this case, deeming the death to be accidental, he saw no cause to send the body to Little Rock for examination. Also, had he accepted the possibility of narcotic ingestion, it might have required him to authorize a proper investigation.’

Parker stood. He removed his possessions from the desk.

‘You ought to find another job,’ he said. ‘Actually, a lot of people in this county ought to find another job, starting with the coroner.’

‘You won’t hear any disagreement from me about Loyd Holt. Speaking for myself, though, I’m too old to retrain.’

‘What about the Jackson killing?’

‘Estella Jackson? That was five years ago.’