Cul-de-Sac (24 page)

Camel didn’t say anything.

“Used to be called the Human Lie Detector isn’t that right?”

Camel didn’t confirm or deny it.

“Well look me in the eye and see if I’m telling the truth … I will kill you to get those pictures.”

He wasn’t lying.

McCleany went back to addressing the ball.

Camel said, “You don’t know about the elephant do you?”

Another shoulder sag. “The what?”

“The whole reason Growler came back to Cul-De-Sac, so he could get a solid-gold elephant he hid before his cousin was killed, before he went to prison.”

“What is this bullshit—”

“You investigated Hope Penner’s murder, you never saw her uncle’s collection of chess sets?”

“Yeah, J.L. had a fortune in …” McCleany clicked. “Yeah I remember him talking about a chess piece, an elephant, he said it was worth more than anything else he owned.” And that idiot Paul Milton had babbled something about an elephant too. While McCleany was recalling this, Camel reached next to the door frame and pulled down on the fire alarm, setting off a loud clanging out in the hallway.

McCleany wearily put the club head on the floor, spread his feet and rested both hands on the butt of the grip like he was posing as a dandy, like he should be wearing a top hat. “Well that was a Mickey Mouse thing to do.”

“I can’t hear you,” Camel said. “The alarm’s ringing.”

McCleany came Camel’s way, holding the club in his left hand, with his right he was bringing out the stainless steel revolver.

“Security will be here in less than two minutes,” Camel said, checking his watch. “Elevators are turned off automatically, you’ll run into security on your way down the steps. Even if they don’t
stop you they’ll have your description … which might come in handy when the investigation starts, who shot me.”

McCleany stopped. “Got it all figured out.”

“Wasn’t that tough.”

McCleany was shaking his head to indicate his continued disappointment in Camel. “You know that
really
was a chickenshit thing to do,” he said. “I mean, it’s the kind of stunt a high school sissy pulls when the bullies are roughing him up in the hallway, he goes for the fire alarm.”

“Yeah well …”

The golfer came within a club’s length of Camel who pointedly checked his watch again.

“I ain’t done with you or your girlfriend,” McCleany promised, holding the club head right in Camel’s face.

Since Camel had moved slowly and painfully ever since being punched in the stomach McCleany was caught off guard when Camel’s hand snaked out so quickly, grabbing the club, yanking it away, turning it around to hold the club as you would a baseball bat, swinging for the golfer’s head.

McCleany ducked. “Grip’s all wrong,” he told Camel as he raised the revolver … Camel swinging a second time, striking a forearm and knocking the .38 loose.

“Never took a lesson in my life,” Camel said quietly. McCleany started to say something smart too but decided to leave without further comment when Camel picked up the .38.

Camel didn’t follow. The security guards would be here soon, maybe not within two minutes, a time Camel had picked out of the air, but soon enough, and he didn’t want to be caught holding a revolver … he had enough to explain setting off a fire alarm in the office where a man had killed himself just last night.

Something else he had to deal with too, the three bodies he found today and whatever loose ends went with them … a neighbor might’ve spotted him at the Raineys’ house, the manager of Norton’s apartment building can describe him, and Camel is going to look suspiciously like an accessory unless he can explain
what he was doing at the crime scenes, tell someone in authority how he came to find those bodies. He knew a judge he could trust and decided that would be his next order of business … calling the judge.

When Camel heard security coming he stashed the .38 and went out into the hall to meet them … three guys running, Jake Kempis in the lead.

“You lied to me,” she told Jake Kempis.

“Mrs. Milton the state police have jurisdiction—”

“No, I thought you were a nice man,” Annie said, starting to remove Kempis’s jacket, “but you’re not … you lied to me.”

He said for Annie to go ahead and keep the jacket and she did but only because she had no alternative. Annie didn’t thank him.

Parker Gray looked shattered when he opened the door to Kempis’s car. “Mrs. Milton I wonder if you could come with me please.”

He’d been horrible to her during the questioning about Paul’s death and Annie didn’t want to go anywhere with him. “I was attacked,” she said without looking at Parker’s face.

“Yes I know.” He extended a hand but Annie stepped from the car without his help. Gray leaned down and said, “Thanks Jake.”

Annie leaned down too. “Yeah, thanks Jake.”

“I’m sorry ma’am.”

Parker Gray took her to his car. When she was seated in the front passenger side she asked if all this was still connected to Paul’s death.

“All of what?”

“Am I under arrest?”

“No, nothing like that.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I
got a little of the story from Kempis, I need to hear it from you huh?”

“I want to be taken to the Nefferings’ house, that’s where I was staying.”

“You give me directions, I’ll drive you there.” But he made no move to start the car.

“Let’s go then.”

“Were you raped?”

“No but—”

“I could still take you to the hospital if you want.”

“I’ve told you what I want, I want to go to the Nefferings’ house, I want a hot shower … is Teddy still in jail?”

Gray started the engine and turned on the headlights but didn’t move the car. During the interrogation following Paul’s suicide, Gray offered lurid theories about Annie and Teddy, making Annie feel guiltier than she already did. He speculated that Teddy killed Paul, that Annie engineered the whole scenario to get rid of a husband and regain an old lover … Annie had been physically afraid of him as if any moment he might start slapping her around.

But now he spoke to her in a soft voice. “What happened to you this afternoon Mrs. Milton?”

Annie told him about going to Cul-De-Sac, finding the chest, finding papers about the organization Paul belonged to, Our Brothers’ Keepers, the group that apparently helped get Growler out of prison, finding pornographic photographs in the chest—

Gray swung around so quickly that she flinched back against the door. “Where are those photographs right now?” he demanded.

“Still in Paul’s workshop as far as I know.” She told Gray about Growler threatening her, his horrible tattoo, how she nailed his foot to the floor and even then barely escaped when he jumped into the back of her truck. “I don’t know if he’s dead or what, when I left he was lying in the road. Have you sent someone out to check on him?”

Gray replied with a question of his own. “You’ve told me everything huh?”

“Yes.” Everything except finding the elephant, which Annie
wanted for herself because Paul had died to get it for her and in her mind that elephant had become Paul’s memorial … and also because it was worth three million dollars.

Gray asked her again to tell him everything that had happened between her and Growler, what she found in that chest, everything … and Annie did, everything except the elephant. Gray listened without comment, seemingly distracted and saddened by something other than what Annie was saying. His dark suit was rumpled, a red tie loose at the neck, he needed a shave and a shower and sleep … he looked haggard in a soul-troubled way that reminded Annie of her mother in those days following the funeral of Annie’s father.

Gray moved the shift lever to Drive but held his foot on the brake, reluctant to leave. “You sure you don’t want to be seen by a doctor huh?” he said after a long wait.

“Except for this bump on my forehead I’m fine.”

Another pause before he spoke. “I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”

Annie thanked him.

Gray took his foot off the brake pedal allowing the car to ease forward. Out on the road he continued at such a slow pace that drivers who managed to pass him did so with glares on their faces while the ones forced to pile up behind used their horns, their brights. Gray didn’t notice, his mind elsewhere … it was like he’d forgotten Annie was in the car.

When he finally spoke he acted as if someone was forcing him to ask the question. “Those photographs, that young woman having sex with different men you said … you recognize any of the men?”

“No.”

“That was a quick answer.”

“Well I didn’t—”

“You take a good long look at each picture huh?”

“Not really.”

He pulled off to the side of the road without using a turn signal, a maneuver that earned him a horn and a finger from the driver
behind. Leaving the car running and in gear, he turned to Annie. “How many pictures did you find?” Still trying to be careful with her, Gray held his face in what passed for a kindly expression … but Annie could tell it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to stay calm.

“I told you, there were eleven snapshots.”

“Eleven different men with Hope.”

“Hope? She was the girl who was killed—”

“And you looked at each of those eleven different men, could you see their faces really well?”

“To tell you the truth I was mainly trying to determine if Paul was—”

“What the fuck your husband got to do with this huh?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know why he had those pictures—”

“Was Growler in any of the photographs?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t
think
so?”

“I was looking to see if Paul—”

“You didn’t recognize anyone huh?”

“Why do you keep asking me that, I told you—”

“Don’t bullshit me on this.”

“I thought one of the men was vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him.”

Gray grabbed the steering wheel and hit the accelerator, pulling a U-turn and traveling now above the speed limit back in the opposite direction.

She asked where they were going.

He didn’t answer.

She told him she changed her mind, she wanted to see a doctor after all.

No reaction from Gray.

“You offered to take me to a hospital, that’s where I want to go.”

Nothing.

“Please, you said you’d take me to a hospital or wherever I wanted to go … take me to the Nefferings’ house.”

Gray didn’t answer, he was concentrating on driving and on
something else, whatever was troubling him, whatever decision he was trying to make.

After a few more miles Annie recognized the route they were taking. “No, I don’t want to go there.”

“I’ll just pick up those pictures, then take you—”

“No, this isn’t right! That man, Growler—”

“He won’t hurt you.”

“Don’t take me back there,
please
.”

But Gray obviously wasn’t going to change his mind and Annie had to settle for curling up in the seat, feeling small and vulnerable in Kempis’s oversized jacket.

She made gray stop the car before turning into Cul-De-Sac’s lane, Annie wanted to show him the exact spot where Growler had been thrown from the truck. He wasn’t there … no body, no blood.

“I bet he walked back to Cul-De-Sac,” Annie said, her voice rising. “He was naked, he was hurt bad … he
had
to go back to Cul-De-Sac, he’s there right now, he’s—”

“He won’t hurt you as long as I’m around.”

“You don’t understand, I don’t even want to
see
him.”

“Mrs. Milton, those photographs are critical to an investigation—”

“
What
investigation, you won’t tell me anything! Is Teddy still in jail? Why did Paul have those photographs?”

“The charges against Camel are being dropped.”

“Why did you keep insisting he killed Paul?”

“I was obligated to explore that possibility.”

“Obligated to charge him with murder?”

“It wasn’t a homicide charge and I told you huh … all charges are being dropped. The photographs are important for another reason, unrelated case.”

“Unrelated case? Then what in hell am I doing here?”

He told her to get back in the car. Gray drove to the side of Cul-De-Sac where he stopped and killed the engine, turned off the headlights. “Get out.”

Annie told him she intended to file a complaint. “You’re putting me in danger bringing me here, this isn’t right.”

“Do you know what vehicle Growler is driving?”

She didn’t answer.

He reached over and grabbed her by the hair. “What’s he driving huh?”

Annie was almost as frightened of Gray as she had been of Growler … why was this happening to her?

“Mrs. Milton.” He shook her by the hair. “His car huh?”

“I didn’t see what he was driving.”

“How’s he get around, there’s no vehicle here now.”

“
I don’t know
.”

Gray released her. “I thought you said he was crippled, how’d he make it back here from the county road?”

“I don’t know.” Annie was confused and weary … she just wanted this all to be over with.