Fury and the Power (9 page)

When she looked again through tears washing out the dust, the cloud had settled from treetop height, revealing the sun again. Karloff was walking away, in the direction the herd had fled.

"I believe I've had enough of elephants for today" Etan said in a dust-strangled voice.

"Aye," Pert said. She ran the tip of her tongue around her lips, leaving them muddy. "Wa'n't the auld boy magnificent, though. Woonder wha' upset him?"

"A lion took out his eye," Eden said. "He doesn't like lions."

Pert looked sharply at her. "Elephants fear no creature. And thir wir no lion hereaboot this marnin'."

"Karloff thought there was. A lion. Something like a lion. I'm not sure."

"I need a change of clothes," Pegeen said, woeful again.

STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA

OCTOBER 14

10:45 A.M. EDT

T
he four-man team from Atlanta PD's homicide division assigned to investigate or mop up after the murder of Pledger Lee Skeldon had taken close to fifty statements before it was finally possible for them to meet with Jimmy Nixon's mother. She had been hospitalized shortly after hearing the grim news:
 
shock and an irregular heartbeat. The family lawyer had kept everyone, particularly the media, away from Rita Nixon and her two younger children.

Lewis Gruvver and Matt Ronyak went out to Stone Mountain when the lawyer consented to his client being "interviewed"—not questioned—so APD could conclude the paperwork. Jimmy Nixon continued to linger, on massive life support, at Grady Hospital downtown, but he never would speak again. Everyone wanted a motive, of course, which Matt thought was bullshit. He was all too familiar with senseless killings. And they had twenty-three open cases that were a lot more interesting to work on.

They checked out a car and took Memorial Drive east through a billboard blight to the Clearview address, a two-story brick-and-frame house on a high terrace. The park and the granite dome jutting eight hundred feet above the Piedmont plain was almost in the Nixons' backyard. Mid-October, but summer still had a grip on the weather. The local cops had closed off the Nixons' block on Clearview; phone calls to the house from religious crackpots vowing revenge on the family.

"I went to school near here," Lee Gruvver said. "Redan High."

"Track star, right? The high hurdles?"

"Til I blew out a knee my soph year at Morris Brown. Eight months of rehab. The Olympics came to town; all I could do was watch."

"Tough break," Ronyak said. He was twenty years older than Gruvver, hadn't made detective until he was thirty-six. Gruvver breezed in, college man, second cousin to the Atlanta City Council president. Race-based fast-tracking at APD gave Ronyak the redneck, but Gruvver had proved to be conscientious and astute. A good detective. And anyway, Matt's mother had been half Cherokee.

They were met at the residence by the family lawyer, whose name was Zetella. Rita Nixon was on the patio out back with a neighbor, and her other kids were in psychological counseling.

Before meeting Mrs. Nixon, the two detectives looked over Jimmy's room. His computer had been removed the day after the evangelist was murdered and its hard drive scoured to see where the kid's interests lay when he was surfing the net, but apparently he had no interest in porn or diabolism, or straight religion. Mostly paperbacks on his bookshelf, required reading material for school. He subscribed to
Sports illustrated
. The swimsuit issue was well thumbed. Posters on his walls were of local pro sports figures. Chipper Jones, Michael Vick. Photos of his mother and father, who lived with a new wife and an infant son in Phoenix. Jimmy and his siblings spent three weeks each summer and alternate Christmases in Arizona. There were snapshots of the kids with R. Palmer Nixon, burly and balding, prosperous in pawn broking and the used-car biz. Poolside at the house in Paradise Valley, horseback riding in a desert mountain setting. In the photos everyone seemed to be having a good time. Arms around each other, spontaneous smiles, no sulks or resentful faces as if the kids had been made to pose. The APD detective who had gone to Phoenix to talk to the heartbroken Palmer Nixon had heard nothing to indicate that Jimmy might have had a violent temper kept carefully under control.

Albums of snapshots. Proms, parties. Jimmy with girls his age, but seldom the same girl twice. No one special in his young life. Team pictures dating back to Jimmy's first appearance in a Pee-Wee Football uniform.

Gruvver took a closer look at a glossy photo recently Scotch-taped to the mirror over Jimmy's dresser. Jimmy with his dad and a woman who may have been his stepmother; the fourth person in the photo, between the others, seemed familiar to Gruvver. Showbiz type, looking straight at the camera, big smile. And the photo was autographed to Jimmy.

"Know who that is?" Gruvver asked Matt Ronyak. "Can't place him. An actor?"

"Magician, I think. Not David Copperfield." He puzzled over the signature, all loops and flourishes. "Gray, something. That's who he is. Lincoln Grayle. They must have done Vegas when Jimmy was out there this past summer, taken in some shows."

"Anything else we need to look at in here?"

Gruvver stared at a portrait of Jimmy, age about ten, all ears and teeth and with that sunny smile, face-to-face in winsome profile with his mother. It was a long stare, with sparse expectations.

"Nice kid. No history of substance abuse. Well adjusted as kids come nowadays. Took the divorce okay... everyone says. Did his chores, got the grades, played football. He was hoping for a scholarship to a Division I school, but he was undersized for a college lineman these days, no foot speed his coach says. I guess he would have adjusted to that disappointment too. Four nights ago he has a good supper, kisses Mom good-bye, gets into his car, drives to Philips Arena, waits for his chance, then kills a man like a wild animal kills. Or the remote ancestor still hangin' around like a ghost in the atavistic brain. It's almost as if Jimmy—"

Gruvver made a gesture of dissatisfaction and irritability.

"What?" Ronyak prompted with a sour glance. Gruvver was using unfamiliar words again, a not-so-subtle reminder of his superior education.

"I'm not sure." Gruvver shook his head. "Believe in the devil, Matt?"

"Not since I stopped going to church in a mobile home and speaking in tongues."

"I don't go none too regular, but I love Jesus and I still read my Bible. If the devil was real enough for Jesus, he's real enough for me. The devil
and
his legion."

"Why drag religion into this? The kid just snapped."

"No rhyme or reason. Yeah. I'm down with that." Ronyak nodded.

"Good, Lew. Now let's us finish up here, without gettin' melodramatic."

"Somebody could've been in the car with Jimmy Nixon as he drove downtown. Sat with him in the arena, whisperin' a different sermon in his ear."

"Like who?"

"That remote ancestor. Another Jimmy, one he didn't know a thing about."

"Do I deserve this? The Lew Gruvver Twilight Zone Comedy Hour? How about you yank the wild hair out of your ass, and we try to be professional here. Save your bad hunches for your bookie."

A
few minutes after they sat down with Rita Nixon. It was obvious they weren't going to get anything useful. She was flanked by her lawyer, Zetella, a neighbor friend whose name was Marge, and her father, whom she called "Powzie." The family name was Cripliver. Powzie Cripliver was one of those elderly men who wear baseball caps with their suits and florid ties. His eyes brimmed with tears and he clung to his daughter's hand.

Rita was still sedated, slow on the uptake, prone to looking around the shady yard with wide vacant eyes. Clearly she hadn't accepted the fact that anything bad had happened because of, or to, her son Jimmy.

Gruvver was able to get in a few questions when she paused in her ramble of reminiscences, questions Matt Ronyak thought were a further waste of time.

"Mrs. Nixon, did Jimmy say much about his trip to Las Vegas this summer?"

". . . I guess so. Las Vegas. I don't remember."

"He saw a show; I believe it was Lincoln Grayle?"

"Oh. The magician. Yes. He enjoyed the show very much. And meeting Mr. Grayle afterward. You see, Jimmy was a Lucky Ticket holder."

"So Jimmy was interested in magic?"

"Well. Not that I recall. He likes sports." Rita Nixon took a long breath. Her right hand trembled. "Jimmy doesn't like to talk about himself."

"He's not a talker, but he is a doer," her father said. "Whatever you ask of him, Jimmy gets the job done. You never hear a whine out of Jimmy, like so many kids these days. Nothing's ever good enough for 'em."

Gruvver kept his eyes on Rita Nixon. "Do you know if Jimmy was ever hypnotized? At a party, or—"

"What are you getting at, Officer?" Zetella interrupted.

"Detective. Mrs. Nixon?"

". . . Hypnotized? I don't know. I don't think so. Would anyone like more lemonade? Marge made it. I love you, Marge. I love you too, Powzie. Everything's going to be all right, I know it. Because otherwise. Simply can't. Bear it." She began breathing rapidly, too rapidly. Bloodless nostrils pinching in.

"Oh, darling," Marge said.

Matt Ronyak cleared his throat. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Nixon. I'm sure that'll be all." He looked at Gruvver, who was looking at some tall hollyhocks that grew near the patio.

T
he detectives had lunch at a Hardee's where Memorial Drive passed under 285, the Interstate highway that circled Atlanta.

For the better part of their meal Lew Gruvver was silent, a finger lightly brushing the underside of his chin when he was in deep-think mode. Ronyak did his usual monologue about his missed opportunities in the business world.

"Six-seven years ago we could've taken out a second on the house and used some of that money Easter Belle's mama left her. Bought us that bankrupt AM station in Douglas County, reformatted it Hispanic. We'd have been the first in the Atlanta broadcast area. Hell, I seen it comin'. The construction trades brought 'em north. Now there's at least a quarter-million Hispanics live up here, a Mex restaurant in every shopping center, and half a dozen Spanish-language stations, all making good money. They even do the Braves games in Spanish now."

"Uh-huh."

Ronyak watched Gruvver and muffled a few belches with the back of his hand. The farts would come next. Lately he ate like a dog; chewing hurt his gums.

"Where did you think you were going with that notion about hypnosis? I believe it's common knowledge you can't hypnotize people to do something that's against their will, murder included."

"Uh-huh."

"So?"

Gruvver returned from his reverie with a heavy sigh, drank from his lukewarm glass of raspberry tea.

"Hypnosis seems innocent enough as a party game, but amateurs without meanin' to can surely mess up a mind that's on the edge of overload anyhow. And Jimmy might have had a high level of suggestibility."

"You think Jimmy Nixon was in a fuckin' trance when he killed Skeldon?"

"It could be more complicated than that. I majored in cultural anthropology, did my senior thesis on pathologies of communication—"

"Oh, no shit?" Ronyak said with a smile.

"—Took parallel courses in population genetics, cybernetics, mass psychology, and chaos theory at Georgia State—"

"Anthropology and mass psychology? Your ideal occupation would be running a strip club."

"It all comes in handy sometimes where I do pull my paycheck. Matt, what I know about Jimmy so far bothers hell out of me."

"We don't need to get too involved here" Ronyak cautioned yet again. "They laid Skeldon to rest this morning up there in Lumpkin County. Five thousand mourners and the Goodyear blimp. Chief, the Mayor, the goddamn
Governor
, they just want this one off the books, forget all the
National Enquirer
crap about cults and Dark Forces at work."

"Nothing that sinister."

"You said the devil."

"Devil's in all of us, dude. Nowadays he's called 'The Stress of Modern Living."'

"Clears that up."

"Jimmy snapped. Like you said."

"Then what was that stuff you were talking, the artistic brain?"

"Atavistic. Primal. The reptilian complex of the triune brain, which doesn't have the neural circuitry that allows us modern folk to cope with new situations. Reptilian mentality is instinctive, limited to flight or fight. 'Snapping' is another way of sayin' that Jimmy underwent a rapid personality change. Puberty can be chaotic. The hormone frenzy. Sexual, parental, and peer-group pressures. Man said once, 'Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.' My daddy had that on a bronze plaque on his desk. He was a bank loan officer, until stomach ulcers did him in."

"Mine was pretty well eat up by adult-onset diabetes."

"Think Jimmy didn't have a shitload of pressure on him, even if he didn't allow it to show? This's the age of information overload. Wars everywhere; atrocities, genocide, famine, disease. Economy's a loser, layoffs, no jobs. Global warming, disappearing rain forests, the poles are shifting, the ozone fuckin' layer's about to disappear, we'll all get skin cancer if terrorists with suitcase nukes don't get us first. Child pornographers, stalkers, rapists, politicians. Not necessarily in that order. Dirty water, air's worse, cows are crazy, can't eat meat. Bitch, moan, sob. Life's tough, school's tougher, football is a grind. Some of these high school coaches are sadistic morons. Summer camps, temperature on the fields around here can hit 130 degrees. Get tough, suck it up, God damn you, Nixon,
dig
; you wanta play football for me this year? Yes, sir, yes,
sir
.