Niceville (17 page)

This exercise provided a frisson that lasted not nearly long enough, since this sort of activity bears some parallels to crack addiction.

After a short time, he was edgy again, feeling that there was still useful work to be done here.

He tilted the bottle up, drained it to half, listening in a distracted way to the staccato yapping of Mrs. Kinnear’s demented shi-tzu and staring at the screen. Something was surfacing. He could feel it working up, something inspired at first by the sight of his own nakedness and then becoming more specific as he recalled some of the insights he had gained into the people of Niceville in the course of his day job.

Not the
natural
course, since the job description didn’t include snooping through boxes of tax records in the basement or poking around in old family albums up in the attic. Amazing the stuff that people hang on to, or forget they ever had, or think they’ll get away with keeping.

For example, the cosmetic surgeon with a cardboard box full of counterfeit med school diplomas. The retired letter carrier who had seventeen bags of undelivered mail in her furnace room. The pharmacist with several cartons of stolen prescription drugs in her closet.

And there was a guy, a bank manager type, had this nice big rancher near Mauldar Field, a pillar of the community, who was taking peep shots of his teenage daughters in the bathroom.

Bock, in the course of his professional labors at the banker’s house, had found the tiny camera in the ceiling of the shower stall, concealed in the fan housing. After some detective work, he had traced the fiber-optic cable to a still-frame recorder in the attic, hidden inside a trunk full of old clothes.

Bock had managed to copy the contents of the camera’s hard drive, getting at least a thousand different shots of the girls over several years, doing all the things one normally does in a bathroom, the girls of course totally oblivious, which was the whole point.

Bock had savored the shots for a very long time—they gave him a
godlike sense of
power
over these half-grown girls—seeing what no man had yet seen, watching them do all their secret female rituals.

But even that sick thrill wore off after a while, as they will, and Bock had posted the shots—anonymously—on this voyeur website, shredding his own copies as soon as the download was complete.

But what
was
the guy’s
name
?

Can’t mess with a guy’s life without a name.

It’d be in his work records, on the Niceville Utility laptop, wouldn’t it? One of his first out-calls, maybe five, six years back?

Very risky to tap that source
, Bock thought, trying to calm himself down.

Remember the rules
.

No linkages
.

But if he only used
one
, then there’d be no linkage, right? You can’t draw a line between one dot and no dot.

No.

Not a
banker
.

The guy wasn’t a
banker
.

What do you call a guy who
comptrols
stuff?

A
comptroller
, right?

It was rising up in the back of his mind. The trunk in the attic was filled with old clothes, but they were
weird
old clothes, leathers and feathers and beady folky thingies …

… flowers …

… boxes …

… tiny purses …

It was all in there somewhere …

Think, Bock, think …

Visualize …

Wicker?

Straw?

Weavings?

And then it all came back in a rush.

Littlebasket
.

Morgan Littlebasket
.

He googled it, and there he was, a craggy-faced leathery old buzzard, smiling out like a Redskin Rushmore from the website banner of something called the Cherokee Nation Trust, based in Sallytown.
Some more googling delivered up a news photo dated five months ago, the guy posing with two very foxy-looking young daughters at a graveside, with a caption underneath—

Bock could feel his blood rising as he looked at the two pretty young women in their mourning dresses, holding fresh-cut flowers, so solemn and sad and brave at the funeral of their sainted mother, and here was the All-Seeing Eye of Tony Bock looking down upon them and knowing pretty much all there was to know about what was under those tight black dresses.

But the
shots
.

The
proof
.

He had shredded his own.

They were gone forever.

And he had no reason to believe that the twisted old pervert would still have his spy camera hidden in that trunk, even if Bock could talk his way back into the house, which would be a damned stupid thing to do in the first place.

But Bock
needed
those shots.

Would they still be on that pervo voyeur website? Maybe in some sort of National Pervo Library of Sexual Congress?

Possibly
.

He held his fingers over the keyboard, hesitating, like a boy selecting a chocolate from a gift box, his mouth open and his thick lips wet. The fact that he was, in effect, about to commit a kind of suicide was not clear to him at the time.

Nick took the unmarked navy blue Crown Vic. He let Beau Norlett drive because otherwise, with nothing to occupy him, Beau tended to chatter and Nick wanted to have some time to think about being turned down for a re-up by Dale himself, a personal no from a good friend and therefore deeply cutting.

Dale Sievewright and Nick Kavanaugh went back a long way, long before Yemen, all the way back to Benning and Fort Campbell. Dale’s saying no to Nick’s reenlistment when the whole Army was being bled white and even the motor pool pogues and the weekend wannabe warriors were pulling multiple redeployments—it just really shook him up.

He came out of his complicated thoughts vaguely aware that Beau was humming to himself, some sort of gospel number—he and May were Pentecostals—they were on Lower Powder Springs going cross-town towards the probation offices in Tin Town, and Niceville was ticking along in its own sweet way, the haphazard tangle of streets and avenues shaded with oaks and pines and beeches, Spanish moss hanging down, the streets and sidewalks packed with people and traffic, everybody coming and going in the steady gray rain, their figures blurred through the windshield glass, the Crown Vic’s tires hissing on the road, fog drifting over it all.

“Beau, you have your blues, don’t you?”

Beau looked over at him, back out to the road.

“Well, you know, sometimes I get a bit down, you know, I mean the job don’t—”

“Dress blues, Beau. Dress blues.”

Beau ducked his head, a smile lighting him up.

“Oh, man, Nick, I thought you was asking—”

“Tig wants us to go down to Cap City on Friday. Represent the unit. That’s a full-dress thing.”

Norlett looked worried.

“Ahh, look, the catch is, Nick, I kinda gained some weight since I bought them. Don’t know if I could get—”

Here realization dawned upon him.

“You mean Tig wants us
both
to go. Me going with
you
? You and me? For the unit?”

“That’s the plan. How much weight?”

“I … maybe fifteen, twenty pounds. Doubt I could button up the tunic.”

“You’ve got four days. Get Gabriel to let it out for you. Wear a corset if you have to. Gabriel has them in the stockroom. Don’t be ashamed. Dress blues are a bitch to wear well. A lot of guys use a corset to get trim. Do it if you have to. I want you looking strack. This means a lot to Tig.”

Beau’s face knotted up.

“Strack?”

“It’s an Army term. Strictly According to Regulations. Strack.”

Beau didn’t get it. Nick sighed and left him with the problem. In a minute Beau had forgotten it, his expression opening up again, delighted, his happy face as shiny as a banister.

“I will, Nick—I mean, I’m honored to be asked—”

“Here it is,” said Nick, cutting in.

They were rolling up to a low strip mall on the edge of Tin Town, Niceville’s version of a dangerous slum, a run-down neighborhood that had grown up along the muddy banks of the Tulip River a mile north of Tulip Bend, which was the beginning of the club and tourist districts.

Tin Town was everything Americans have come to expect in a dangerous slum, twenty-five maybe thirty square blocks of crumbling wooden bungalows, fenced-off lots, car wreckers, bars, mom-and-pop stores all barred up like forts, trailer parks walled in behind rusted chain-link fences, bricked-up speaks, and roach-infested crack houses.

The main industry ruling the place was a lethal combination of
grinding hard times, blood-simple gunsels, pointless death, and blue ruin.

The strip mall had a busted-down 1950s-era sign at one end with letters spelling
THE MIRACLE MILE
peeling off like the mange.

The Miracle Mile, which was neither a miracle nor a mile, contained about fifteen ramshackle stores in a ragged rambling row, the eaves sagging and tiles missing from the roofs.

The local branch of Belfair and Cullen County Probation and Correctional Services—known in Tin Town as the Probe—had a white-painted steel grate covering the old glass window wall, a storefront operation sandwiched in between a dollar store and a porn shop.

The porn shop—the most prosperous business in the strip—had a blue neon sign in front that flashed out the name
WIGGLES AND GIGGLES
over and over again. Every time he saw that sign Nick wanted to put a bullet in it.

As Beau brought the car to a stop in the slot in front of the Probe, four dingo-dog-looking black kids in ragged hip-hop togs started to shuffle off to the far end of the strip, one kid looking back over his shoulder, feral eyes sharp under his sideways cap. Beau and Nick looked at them in silence.

“Which kid is holding?” Nick asked.

Beau gave it a minute.

“The one with the gym bag, because if we chase him he can throw it over a fence and then we have to prove possession.”

“Very good. See the Goth chick in the Doc Martens? Down by the Helpy Selfy?”

Beau’s eyes slid over to an anorexic white girl with black holes for eyes and spiky blue hair. She had on a pair of shredded purple stay-ups and a black leather jacket six sizes too large.

She was leaning against the wall outside the milk store, popping her gum and staring fixedly out into the street. She couldn’t have looked any more guilty if she’d been whistling the theme from
Mayberry R.F.D
.

“You want me to do a field interview?”

“I do,” said Nick.

He got out of the passenger side, leaned down and spoke to Beau through the open window.

“Just be careful. Watch her hands. Her street name’s Iris but her real name is Brandy Gule. She may deal shit for Lemon Featherlight, we don’t know yet, but her being here this morning when we’re supposed to have a talk with Lemon tells us something. That’s why I want you to have her in the car when I get back. I want a chance to talk to her. Hear me, Beau, look at me. She looks fifteen, but she’s twenty-four, a runaway from a small town in the Carolinas.

“She looks like a kid.”

His voice was soft, sympathetic. Nick leaned in to get a straight line on Beau’s eyes.

“She’s
not
, Beau. You gotta get that. She killed a jail guard with a nail file. Stuck it in his eye. And then she tore his jugular open. He bled to death on the floor of her cell. Camera shows her sitting there on the cot, chewing gum, watching while he thrashes around on the tiles.”

Beau winced.

“What’d he do?”

“He tried to rape her. Had done it before.”

Nick patted the top of the car, glanced back at the hip-hoppers sliding around the corner, did not look at Brandy Gule, and walked off, pushing through the smeared glass doors of the storefront office.

The interior was lit by a ceiling full of fluorescent bars. The thick air moved sluggishly around the room, stirred by a large fan with blades shaped like angel wings. The floor tiles, almost exactly the color of rubber dog vomit, were peeling up at the edges.

The waiting area had five cheap folding lawn chairs, mix and match, lined up against the wall, all of them empty this early on a Saturday, since most of the clients for the Probe were still lying on their backs in a tangle of crusty bedding, staring up at the ceiling and trying to figure out what the hell had made them do what they think they might have done the night before.

The girl behind the counter was new to Nick, a black-haired number with hard eyes and a sour twist to her lips. She glanced up briefly as Nick closed the door, frowned at him, put her head down, and went back to clacking away at her keyboard, staring fixedly at the screen. Nick let it slide, said good morning, got nothing back.

“Lacy in the back?”

“She’s got a client,” said the girl, with an edge, not looking up. Nick
figured she didn’t like cops. A lot of people didn’t like cops. Some days even he didn’t like cops. Nick held his temper, spoke in a reasonable tone.

“I’m with County CID. She asked to see me. Said it was urgent. Tell her Nick—”

The woman looked up.

“I’m aware that you’re with the police, Detective Kavanaugh. Everyone who comes into this office knows what you are. You’re very well known on the street. Ms. Steinert is very busy. When she’s free, I’ll tell her you’re here.”

Having, as she clearly felt, put the Pig back in his poke, she went back to her keyboard. Nick looked down at the top of her head, studying the part in her shining black hair. Her glossy black nails were too long for the keyboard and they had pink peace signs stuck onto them.
The footprint of the Great American Chicken
, thought Nick. Her tight black skirt was pulled halfway up her thighs. She had fine thighs.

“What’s your name?” he asked, trying out his best smile on the top of her head. Something in his voice got through to her. She heard the edge in it.