Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Look for a last known address for Pruitt Dix.’

‘And Randall Butcher?’

‘I know how to find Randall,’ said Griffin. ‘I’ll just look under the nearest rock.’

66

Parker stretched out the fingers of his hands and heard one of the knuckles crack. Most of the pain was gone from the joints, and he supposed he was fortunate not to have sustained any broken bones to match the scars.

Fortunate not to be in jail.

But not fortunate to be alive.

No, not that.

‘I don’t think it’s any of your business how I came by them,’ he said, in reply to Jurel Cade’s question.

‘I’m just curious, that’s all.’

‘Curiosity is a common ailment. Mortality seems to be the only corrective.’

‘You have a clever way with words, don’t you?’

‘There’s no point in having any other way with them.’

‘I made some calls to New York about you. I know Evan Griffin did too, although he and I have differing responses to what we learned. He elected to involve you in his department’s business, while I would have escorted you to the county line and told you not to come back if you valued your liberty.’

‘Get to the point, Deputy.’

‘Who was Johnny Friday?’ said Cade.

‘A pimp. A procurer of children.’

‘I hear he died.’

‘He didn’t just die. He was killed in a bus station restroom.’

‘They know who did it?’

‘Not yet.’

‘They have any suspects?’

‘I’m sure they do.’

‘Are you one of them?’

‘You take your time getting to the point, but you arrive there eventually, don’t you?’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘Yes, I was interviewed about what happened to Johnny Friday.’

‘And?’

‘I had an alibi.’

‘Did it hold up?’

‘It wouldn’t be much of an alibi if it didn’t.’

‘You’re being clever again.’

‘That makes two of us. If you have an accusation to make, you should have the courage to come out with it.’

Cade relented, but only slightly.

‘When I spoke to New York,’ he said, ‘I detected some ambivalence about the fate that befell Mr Friday. His own mother wouldn’t have described him as any loss to the world, and he was always likely to end up prematurely dead or behind bars. Those who take that view probably feel his murder should become a cold case, so it can quietly be forgotten. At the same time, there are still some in the NYPD who cleave to the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, especially when it applies to one of their own. Just saying.’

Parker began to gather his notes.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I took a trip out to the location where Patricia Hartley’s body was found. I stood on that rise above it, and thought of her remains tumbling down the slope, getting all torn up by those rocks and stones; and that was after what had already been done to her, whatever the coroner and anyone else might have tried to kid themselves into believing.

‘I also attempted to interview Wadena Ott, the woman who found Patricia’s body, but she left town yesterday in a big sedan, and she doesn’t strike me as a person habituated to sedan cars. It’s almost as though someone didn’t want her talking about what she might or might not have seen, and elected to move her just in case she couldn’t be relied on to remember the story she’d been taught.’

Parker nudged with a finger the box containing what passed for the records of Hartley’s death.

‘Those papers, those scraps of fiction, suggest that Patricia Hartley either fell while running down the slope, or else she was already dead when she fell – the coroner speculated on a taste for narcotics, but without any evidence I can see – and her corpse might have been nudged over the edge by an animal. If that was the case, it was an animal that knew the difference between federal and county land, which makes it a very advanced species of predator. I’d be very interested in catching an animal like that. I’d consider it a matter of public safety, because it wouldn’t do to have it out there running wild. Who knows what mischief it might get up to if left to roam unchecked?’

Cade had grown very still, and his eyes held pale fires.

‘And what would you do with it, Mr Parker, once you’d found it? Would you kill it? Is that your favored mode of operation in such cases?’

‘Only if it left me no choice. I’d prefer to trap it, so it could be examined, and an attempt made to determine its nature. After that, people could do with it as they wished. In olden times, villages used to hang the carcasses of wolves from their gates as a warning to the rest of the pack. I feel there might be an aptness to a similar act of display in this instance, metaphorically speaking.’

‘You ought never to have come to this place,’ said Cade.

‘I keep being told that,’ said Parker, ‘but I’m here now, and I’m not leaving until the man who killed these young women has been found. I’ll speak with Chief Griffin about what I’ve learned from the examination of those files. If he thinks you can be of any help in tracing some of the people on my list, I’m sure he’ll be in touch.’

He was at the door when Cade called his name.

‘Men,’ said Cade.

‘What?’

‘You told me you weren’t going to leave until the man who killed those women was found. It’s not one man. It’s at least two.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Whatever might have befallen Patricia Hartley, Estella Jackson and Donna Lee weren’t killed by the same individual. I was at all three scenes, and you weren’t. Jackson’s death was different.’

‘Different how?’

‘There was more rage. Her teeth were broken, and her private parts were all cut up by what had been done to them with that branch. The other bodies didn’t have that level of damage inflicted on them, not even Donna Lee’s.’

‘Okay,’ said Parker. He was still trying to figure out how the conversation had taken this sudden turn when Cade decided to answer the question for him.

‘I may not like you, Mr Parker,’ he said, ‘but don’t mistake that for not giving a shit about those dead girls.’

Parker did not reply, but left Cade slouched in a chair, the sunlight reaching for him through the blinds, and wondered at whose hypocrisy might be greater: Cade’s or his own.

67

Denny Rhinehart didn’t usually open for business until just past noon, except on weekends. This was not entirely of Rhinehart’s own volition. Burdon might have been a wet county, but the Cargill town council, under the influence of various church representatives, had strongly suggested that bars within the town limits should consider serving liquor only after some acceptable portion of the working day was done. This had followed a surge in closures of local businesses, leading to more than a hundred job losses and a concomitant increase in arrests for DWI, minor assault, and domestic violence. While Cargill’s drinking establishments were under no legal obligation to abide by this motion, they were given to understand that their responses to it might color any future discussions surrounding the renewal of their licenses.

Rhinehart considered it all so much foolishness, because a man or woman requiring a drink before lunch – or even before breakfast, he who is without sin and all that – could simply look to their own supply at home; or if they were running low, a gas station or liquor store would promptly rectify the situation, within the strictures of the law. Also, if you’d lost your job, and had no prospect of finding another anytime soon, or not anywhere in Burdon County, why not take time to catch your breath, crack open a cold one, and consider your options, however limited they might be? And maybe it would be better to do so in a bar like the Rhine Heart, where a sympathetic bartender could monitor your intake, listen to your problems, and possibly talk you down when you started getting too angry or depressed, than drink alone at home – or worse, not alone but in the vicinity of a partner or spouse who just didn’t understand, goddammit, and might become the victim of a regrettable loss of temper.