In the Blood (27 page)

I slipped between vehicles, saw an orange Toyota Four-Runner ahead and to the side. It boasted all the trimmings, roof lights, chrome luggage rack, mud guards. I wouldn’t have seen the vehicle except that it was lit by twin halogen lamps. A white towel was closed in the rear gate of the vehicle, a red cross hand-painted in its center.

It was a small aid station, which made an ironic sense, given the stoners and drunks wandering through a farm field at night. It was a place to fix barb-wire gouges, burns from stumbling in the fire,
noses busted in friendly fights, methedrine ODs, and so forth.

I heard a voice moan, “Owwww. That fuckin’ hurts,” and recognized the voice of Spider. I saw him in a chair beside the aid station, the medic’s back to me, pulling a suture tight.

“It hurts, gawdammit,” Spider moaned. “I hurt ever’where.”

I heard voices back in the field, the unwelcoming committee trying to figure which way I’d run. I yearned to hear more of Spider’s cryptic ramblings about Frankenstein babies, but crouched and zigzagged to my truck, blowing away with lights off before my pursuers arrived with a noose.

I made it home at two a.m. I saw the call light flicking on my phone, pulled out my cell, shut off before the rally. Calls were stacked up on the cell as well, all from Harry. I felt a sense of dread.

“What is it, bro?” I said when he picked up.

“Noelle’s gone. This time the grab was successful.”

My breath froze in my throat. “What? How?”

“The security detail and staff were distracted by a car burning on the street below…”

“A what?”

“The fire trucks added to the drama, kept the faces glued to the window. The flames were twenty feet high.”

I saw the picture. “Staged,” I said.

“Stolen car. A backseat full of rags. A soaking of gasoline and fuel oil. The staff were distracted for maybe five minutes.”

I heard voices in the background, a clattering like a cart or gurney.

“You’re at the hospital?” I asked.

“The thing happened at eleven. I’ve been interviewing, checking security tapes – nothing.”

“What can I do, bro?”

“Go to bed. Get some sleep. There’s nothing left here.”

“I’ll see you in a few hours and –”

“Carson?” he interrupted, his voice ragged.

“Yes?”

“You were at the rally, right?”

When I didn’t answer, he clicked off. I took his advice and fell into bed. Sleep was a series of disjointed images: a mouth talking with only the sound of thunder emerging, arachnids crawling over webs spun from faces, subhuman creatures feeding a fire so hot it burned blue.

After crawling from bed at five a.m., I climbed into my truck in the dark and drove toward Mobile, at the last moment turning east on I-10 and crossing away from Mobile, driving east into Daphne.

The sky carried only a whisper of light when I parked in Kavanaugh’s drive. The house was dark inside. I approached the door of her office and sat on the stoop. There was no sound from the house, the drapes drawn and the curtains closed.

The sun began giving form to the shapes in the night and I felt vulnerable. I retreated to the causeway, the slender spit of sand linking the east and west shores of Mobile Bay, pulling off near the eastern shore, by Meaher Park.

I sat on the hood of my truck and looked across
the water. Fishermen in small boats were gathering their nets. I pictured escaping fish beneath the surface, jumbled and in turmoil, much like the thoughts in my brain had become of late. Last week, the jumble and turmoil had started not just crawling into the light but ramping up into actions. I had done stupid things that seemed to explode from the shadows of my mind.

Was I going mad? Had the family curse slithered from a hiding place in my genes?

I tucked the disquieting thoughts away for later study, then went to do my job as best as I knew.

I found Harry at the hospital, trying to make sense of the crime. He sat in an exam room with a full-size poster of a skinless human body on the wall and laid out the details of the abduction.

“The fire distracted the staff. Someone moved in, took Noelle, and made it outside – or hid until they could get outside. The doc called me at eleven thirty. By the time I got here it was a mess, everyone running into themselves.” Harry looked on the brink of exhaustion, his clothes rumpled, his breath sour.

“Nothing on the cams?”

“A few people that look like staffers. We’re checking them out one by one. We’re checking everyone out one by one. But no one saw anything out of the ordinary.” He looked at me. “I really need you, Carson. I’m not sure if I’m thinking straight.”

I started to argue. “You always get one hundred –”

He stopped me with an upraised palm. “I’m trying to stay here as long as possible, get the investigation on fast-forward. As soon as Tom finds out I’m here, he’ll pull me. Tell him I’m working the Scaler case; buy me some time.”

“Sure.”

I started away. Harry called out.

“Carson?”

I turned to face him.

He said, “I need your head on straight, and I need it now. Don’t let me down, brother.”

I nodded and looked at my feet. I said, “I’m sorry.” It seemed a strange thing to say.

I headed downtown to the department to continue researching Scaler and Tutweiler. On the way I pulled into a convenience store to grab something to eat. I picked at the stacks for five minutes, nothing looking good, finally snatching a couple of chili dogs and a can of Dr Pepper.

A dozen customers queued ahead of me, highway-construction guys in work boots and luminous green shirts. A couple of female office workers in skirts and heels and fresh perfume. I saw a biker-gang type in ratty clothes with a bright chain slung belt to wallet. He was leaning against the wall by the door to the restrooms, talking on his cellphone. He shot me a look, went back to his conversation.

I stood in line and counted my change. I felt eyes on me, looked at the guy. His eyes shot away. Waited. Lifted. Saw me watching him.

He said, “Gotta go, Miriam. Catch you later.” He walked back toward the restrooms.

Miriam
? I thought. The guy who’d smacked me with the hospital cart had been talking to Miriam when I interrupted him in the restroom.

Gotta go, Miriam. We’ll talk later.

Was the improbable name a code for,
I can’t talk now, someone’s listening?
I walked back to the can but saw no one inside. I pushed open the door of the women’s john.

I saw no one until the guy exploded from the stall, shouldering me into the wall as he blasted out the door. I scrambled after him. Bolting toward the front of the store I heard the roar of a Harley cranking up. As I pushed through into the lot, the guy was roaring away, shooting glances over his shoulder.

He’d been following me.

I threw a fiver at the surprised clerk and high-balled to the hospital where I told Harry about the incident. Five minutes later we were with the hospital’s director of human resources, Daria Fareth, an attractive light-skinned black woman with dazzling green eyes.

“We need to talk to a male employee,” I said. “Mid thirties. Five-eleven to six feet tall, stocky, weighs maybe two twenty. Brown hair, thinning at the top. Pushes a cart poorly.”

Wentworth flipped through personnel files with attached ID photos. “Him?” she said, turning the book our way, slender finger tapping a head shot.

“Nope,” I said. “Our guy’s younger and uglier.”

“This fellow?” She turned another photo our way, her nose twitching like a septic odor was rising from the page.

“Bingo,” I said. “Cart-man. What can you tell us about this guy without getting in confidentiality trouble?”

“Michael Douthitt – a less-than-model employee. Lazy, not real bright, smokes inside the hospital, and has a way of…” Wentworth looked at Harry. “A way of talking down to people who aren’t white. But makes it so it doesn’t sound like down, y’know?”

“Gee,” Harry said. “I’ve never encountered that.”

We found Douthitt alone in a small employee lounge on the third floor, eating a bag of chips from one of the machines lining the wall. The room smelled like cigarette smoke. He was leaning back in a chair with his feet on the table, cramming chips in his mouth from his palm, licking it afterward.

“Where is she, Michael?” Harry said.

“Who?”

Harry’s hand lashed out like a cobra, grabbed Douthitt’s collar, pulled him to standing.

“The kid you helped kidnap.”

“I didn’t do nothing. Fuck you.”

Harry reached down and grabbed Douthitt’s long sleeve, pulled it high. Tats: eighty-eights and SS knives and a swastika on his forearm for good measure.

“You like them?” Douthitt sneered. “They don’t like you.”

I grabbed Douthitt by the arm and yanked him
away from Harry before my partner could strangle him.

“Michael Douthitt,” I said, pulling out my cuffs, “you’re under arrest. Accomplice to kidnapping in the first degree. And one attempted kidnapping.”

I saw thoughts tumble through Douthitt’s head, calculations followed by puzzlement. And sudden fear.

“I didn’t do nothing but answer a phone call,” Douthitt said. “And not this time. Book me and I clam tight, call my lawyer. First-class, special-ordered, just for me. I’m bailed fast, out and laughing.”

What the hell did
Not this time
mean? And the bit about the phone call? I felt a prickle up my back; something was haywire.

I turned to Harry, winked twice. Our signal that I was about to go into Oscar-nominee mode.

“Give us a little time here,” I said, brusque, giving Harry an order from the Alpha Dog, showing Douthitt who was in charge. “I wanna get some things straight with Mike. Wait in the hall, wouldya?”

Harry did dumb. “Huh? What you gonna do with –”

“Beat it.” I shot a thumb towards the door. “Go grab a coffee an’ I’ll call you when I need you.”

Harry mumbled, slouched his shoulders, and sullenly shuffled away. Wentworth had mentioned that Douthitt wasn’t bright. A guy in his
mid thirties making minimum wage pushing food carts? I figured the human resources director was right.

When Harry left, I went to the door and looked right and left as if making sure it was just Mike and me, two amigos, members of the same tribe. I closed the door and grinned ear to ear.

“I didn’t see you at Arnold’s rally last night, Mike.”

Douthitt’s mouth fell open.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ. I was there. You was there, too?”

“Arnold is God,” I said. “I never miss a chance to see him. It was fuckin’ incredible, right? Arnold roaring in behind that Harley escort, speaking from high up on that van, the fire burning below. An inspiration to white people everywhere. And wasn’t that band the hottest?” I did few headbanger bows while singing “
Fuck the spics.
”

Douthitt grinned. “Goddamn…you really were there.”

Douthitt had been there too, pretty much nixing him for the grab. But he’d said something about “not this time”. Had he meant the abduction? The advance work? I checked the door again, leaned close to Douthitt.

“Lotsa guys on the force are sympathizers, Mike. I’m the one in charge of going to the meetings, bringing back the news. My pipeline to Arnold used to be Donnie Kirkson, but now I’m tied direct to Boots.”

His eyes widened as much as his gaping, gold-filled mouth.

“Holy shit!” he bayed. “Boots Baker?”

I winced. “Shhhhh!”

“Sorry.”

I sat beside him like a counselor, put my hand on his shoulder. “What went down last night, Mike?”

“Nothing, brother. I was as surprised as everyone else when I got to work today and heard the kid had been grabbed.”

“But the first attempt to snatch the kid…you were in on that, right? The inside man?”

“I got a phone call asking where the kid was. That was all.”

“You don’t know who made the grab last night? You being straight with me?”

He put one hand out, palm down, the other beside his head, like he was swearing on a bible in court. “I swear I got no idea who did the snatch. Not this time. Musta been someone else tipping them off.”

I patted his shoulder like he’d been a good dog. “You got your directions, right, Mike? For if you got caught?”

He tapped his wallet. “I got a lawyer’s number.”

“Call him, pronto. You’re gonna be fine. You gave some directions into a phone, talking casually, right? For all you knew, it was a parent or guardian, right? Getting directions to see the kid?”

Douthitt grinned, thinking I was feeding him lines. He shot some idiot damn Nazi-aryan salute.

I said, “You’re cool, brother, a non-participatory involuntary participantosa. It’s legal shit that means you were involved, but you had no malice aforethought.”

I walked to the door, opened it, peered out. Harry looked at me from a dozen feet away, making sure no one disturbed the conversation in the break room. I turned back inside.

“Tell me something, Mike. Why didn’t you make the grab the first time?”

“They wanted me to, but I wasn’t taking no chance of going to the pen for kidnapping. They said, ‘If you can’t get the kid out, kill it.’ I said, ‘Now I’ve got a murder charge. No way.’ A few days went past, they called and said they’d prepared some guy to do the grab – Bailes. All I had to do –”

“Back up. ‘Prepared’? Your word or theirs?”

“That’s what they said:
prepared
, like food.”

Bailes being prepped with the lie that he had terminal cancer? Bailes had been prepared, all right; cooked like a goose.

Douthitt continued: “Bailes called, said, ‘Where’s the kid?’ I told him how to slip up the back stairs to the fourth floor, the PICU. The kid was third in a line of five.”

“No calls after Bailes failed?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

I gave Douthitt a long side-eyed glance, like I was gauging his worth for the truth.

“The caller let you in on why the kid had to go, Mike? They told you the story, right? It’s scary.”

A pure fishing expedition. I wondered if Douthitt’s handler had given him a reason for Noelle’s abduction, or if he was an ideological soldier, an automaton.