Officer Elvis (6 page)

You didn't need a road map or a GPS to find Mississippi's most notorious meth dealer. “Go ten miles past Flowood on Highway 25. It'll be on your right,” Shelby told Darla. “A white house. Three stories, six columns, and a five-acre fishing hole for a front yard. If there's a pontoon boat out in the water, Hardy Lang will be the one that's in it. Otherwise, knock on the front door hard as you can. Hardy has an aversion to bells. He lives alone and he sleeps odd hours.”

The pontoon was on the water when Darla arrived and she saw Hardy was aboard, surrounded by a dozen water buckets. The buckets were filled with fish, which Hardy was dumping, a bucket at a time, into the muddy water.

Darla parked her Prius at the bottom of the circular gravel driveway and walked to the landing in time to meet Hardy as he docked the pontoon.

The drug kingpin was on the short side. Less than five five, Darla guessed. He was dressed in coveralls and had on a baseball hat with the initials HCH on the front. “Hardy's a great one for self-promotion,” Shelby had told her. Hardy, whose actual age was sixty-one, appeared to be forty-five or seventy-five, depending on what part of him you looked at. His face was grizzled, deep-lined, and covered with white stubble. By contrast, his body was lean and sinewy, with wiry muscles and little body fat.

Darla showed Hardy her badge as he stepped off the pontoon.

“I've seen one like this before, but I don't recall the circumstances,” said Hardy. “Nice design. A lot nicer than them tin-looking badges the county and city cops carry. You were a county dick a while back, right?”

Darla decided she'd indulge Hardy while he went through the usual round of small talk that all Southerners, even criminals, do without thinking about it.

“I was with Shelby at Hinds County,” she said. “He sends his regards.”

“He had me by the short hairs a few times, ole Shelby did,” said Hardy. “But I wiggled loose. I always do.” He offered Darla a grin with three teeth missing, typical of tweakers. It looked like, at one time or another, Hinds County Hardy had been his own best customer.

He removed a handkerchief from the front pocket of his overalls, dusted off a section of the dock, and sat down. Settled in, he dusted off a spot next to him. “Sit down here and join me while I wipe my face in the Mississippi sun,” he said.

Darla sat down on the place Hardy had dusted off for her. The two of them dangled their feet over the water.

“You know what you're looking at?” Hardy asked, pointing to the pond. “It's okay if you don't.”

“A giant mud hole,” said Darla.

“This is a wildlife sanctuary for catfish,” said Hardy, his eyes lighting up, a man with a story to tell and a captive audience. “Every week or so, I take me on up to one of those catfish slaughterhouses in Belzoni.”

“The farm-raised catfish businesses,” said Darla.

“Those places, you know what they do to the poor catfish?” asked Hardy and didn't wait for an answer. “They force-breed the creatures, feed them a diet of ground-up God-knows-what, knock 'em on the head, and sell them for profit. Some of them, they even slice and dice before they get out the door.”

“That sounds about right,” said Darla. “Not that different from cattle.”

“You eat catfish?” asked Hardy.

“I had it once.”

“I'll bet you regretted the experience,” said Hardy.

“Fried catfish,” said Darla. “Aside from the breading, it didn't taste like much. An all-you-could-eat place. I didn't go back for seconds. But are you saying you don't eat the catfish in your pond?”

“I don't feed them, either,” said Hardy. “I rescue them from the slaughterhouses, right out of those overcrowded catfish slums they call ponds. I take as many as I can and I bring them here to catfish heaven. I give them refuge, and let them eat what they find. Nature's way.”

“For my edification, if you're not feeding the fish, what does their diet consist of in this man-made pond?”

“Each other, mostly, I'm guessing,” said Hardy. “You know the saying about the big fish eating the little fish. It seems to be working. Every once in a while I'll scoop one out with a net, just to see how it's doing. Forty, fifty pounds, easy.”

Darla took out the recorder and sat it on the dock between them. “I'm here about your tormentor,” she said.

“Officer Elvis.” Hardy curled his lip the way Tommy used to, gave her another one of his toothless smiles, and slapped his knee.

“Somebody firebombed his car last night,” said Darla.

“You're thinking I didn't know that? That I'm in a news blackout out here? Like the guy on that commercial, a while back, walking around everywhere with a cellphone to his ear, saying ‘Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?' ”

“Actually, I'm thinking that you might have been the one who took Tommy out. What do you know about explosives?”

“They go boom, don't they?”

“Where were you last night, Hardy, from say around seven to nine p.m.?”

“I was on my Tempur-Pedic, sleeping. You got one of those? They really do make a difference. You sleep like you was in the arms of the dear sweet savior.”

“Anybody with you?”

“You want me to kiss and tell?” asked Hardy. “I wasn't raised that way.”

“It's a matter of record that you threatened to kill Detective Reylander when he shut down your meth lab,” said Darla. “I believe your exact words were ‘you put me out of my business, I'll put you out of my misery.' ”

“I don't recall saying that, but it does sound like yours truly,” said Hardy.

“You're going to need a better alibi,” said Darla.

“Well,” said Hardy, “when I need one, I'll find one.” He stood up, “Now, unless you insist on exploring your skills as a fisherwoman, allow me to accompany you to your car, Detective.”

“We're not finished,” she said, still dangling her feet over the side.

“This is where a polite guest would take their cue and leave.”

Darla looked up at Hardy, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. “Unless you're looking for a ride to the MBI office, where you can swap fish stories with the staties for the next twenty-four hours, you better sit back down.”

Hardy put his hands on his hips, stretched to one side, and then to the other—like he was in gym class. “One can expect only so much in the manners department from a Yankee,” he said to himself, and reclaimed his spot on the dock, adjusting his bony butt this way and that, an old man trying to get comfortable.

“Why don't we start here?” said Darla. “Tommy put you out of business. He raided your lab, busted you, and closed your meth operation. Your mobile home was impounded in the process and hasn't been released.”

Hardy removed his hat and wiped his brow. “If we're going to continue conversing about this matter, I'll need to add one or two or three caveats,” he said.

“Number one,” he continued. “That business you said I was in, the illegal one, I don't admit to being in that business. Number two, Officer Elvis—who, by the way, insisted at gunpoint that he be called
Detective
Elvis, didn't raid anything. What the dumb redneck did was knock on the door of my recreational vehicle, which I had parked on recreational land I own for the purpose of well, recreation. His intrusion was not a raid, because the nature of his words and phrases were not along those lines. By which I mean, he did not say, ‘Open up. Sheriff's Department. This is a raid.' Nor anything of a similar nature. What he said was ‘Is somebody in there? I gotta go. Can I use your toilet?' ” Hardy was imitating Tommy imitating Elvis.

He cleared his throat and continued. “The necessary background to the story being that Reylander had gone hunting that day on land I guess he owned, land which ironically was adjacent to my land. The dunce failed to remember to bring a roll of toilet paper with him when he went out in the woods hunting for poor unsuspecting Bambi-like creatures. That kind of forgetfulness in a law enforcement official should be regarded as a sign of feeblemindedness, if you ask me. But I digress. Who's asking? When nature called and Reylander wasn't prepared, he saw my trailer on my land, private property, with signs all over that says so. ‘Keep Out.' ‘Trespassers Beware.' ‘This Land Ain't Your Land. This Land Is My Land. So Get.' Despite such warnings, Officer Elvis come right up unannounced and knocked on my trailer door. When I didn't respond, which was my right not to, he came through the door, an uninvited guest. Now I am fully aware that when nature calls, a man may act in an irrational manner. However, having unlawfully entered my vehicle, Officer Elvis proceeded to the restroom without so much as a howdy-do or a by-your-leave. He did not seek my permission; which is not only illegal but also goddamn bad manners. Later, having finished his business, he exited the restroom, saw me, and recognized me as being someone whom he had tried to arrest on numerous other occasions, without success. At which point he thought he smelled something odious and unpleasant emitting from the kitchen part of my vehicle.”

“What he smelled was meth residue,” said Darla.

“Ammonia and vinegar are common household chemicals. One used for reviving the unconscious, the other as an ingredient in salad dressing.”

“The report also says Detective Reylander saw what he believed to be equipment used in cooking meth,” said Darla.

“What he saw was a few empty pickle jars, some coffee filters, and a couple of propane tanks. Lots of people has stuff like that in a trailer.”

“Also plastic tubing, a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide, empty pill bottles,” said Darla. “Every one of these items is used in the manufacture of crystal meth.”

“Okay,” said Hardy. “So maybe a potion of those items were used for chemistry experiments—which I explained to the intruder Reylander was a hobby of mine.”

“Moving right along, you were arrested.”

“I was falsely charged,” said Hardy, “but not by the Elvis wannabe. He did, however, hold me at gunpoint against my will until the state narcs arrived. I was charged, with intent to manufacture an illegal substance for the purpose of selling said substance. The matter is still pending. I think you can make an educated guess as to my defense, should the matter come before the court, which my attorney assures me will never happen. As to the so-called verbal threat, I attribute those words to a distressed state of mind.”

“Tommy did put you out of business. This business you say you were never in, the one involving the sale of little one gram bags of crystal meth with the initials HCH printed on them. The same initials you have on your baseball hat. Now HCH meth is off the market.”

“As I said earlier in our conversation, I don't admit to having been in that illegal business, but if I were, it would take more than Tommy Reylander to put Hardy Lang out of business. Did you ever think maybe the lack of availability for the products you mention might be the result of the new pseudo-law?”

The Mississippi legislature had, in fact, recently passed a bill making it illegal to purchase cold and allergy medicines with pseudoephedrine, the prime ingredient in meth, without a prescription. Prior to the new law, people like Hardy would send out scores of people to buy as many bottles of pseudoephedrine over-the-counter cold remedies as they could find.

“I know some legislators down at the capitol who would be glad to hear that,” said Darla.

“Then again,” said Hardy, “maybe Hinds County Hardy has seen the error of his sinful ways, and is turning over a new leaf.”

“Come to Jesus, have you?”

“Why not? The Good Book says He died for our sins,” said Hardy. “That ought to include mine.”

“What do you plan on using for money, now that you're out of the business that you were never in? Or have you taken a vow of poverty?”

“Who knows? Maybe I'll just live off the fat of the land,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

Darla got to her feet. “Tell you what. You supply me with the name of someone who can alibi you right now, and I'll spare you the long ride downtown.”

“On what charge?” asked Hardy. “You ain't got nearly enough to arrest me for murder.”

“Wait here,” said Darla, “I've got the bracelets in my car.” She turned and walked toward her Prius.

“Victoria Rutherford is the lady's name,” said Hardy. “Aka ‘Vicksburg Vickie.' ”

“One of Conway's strippers,” said Darla.

“She was here on a social visit. So don't go turning vice on the lady. We may have exchanged bodily fluids, but there wasn't any cash involved.”

“We'll check her out,” said Darla, ready to go. “If she alibis you, there's not much I can do. But if she's skipped town or doesn't corroborate your story, I'll come back here with a county crew and a pump, and drain your pond. And that will be just for starters.”

“You're welcome to stay for supper,” said Hardy, calling after Darla.

“Thanks for the offer, but you're a murder suspect,” said Darla, continuing toward the Prius without looking back.

“I'm a vegan, is what I am!” yelled Hardy.

The next morning, Darla phoned Vicksburg Vickie at her apartment in Madison and clearly woke the stripper up.

“I know why you're calling,” said Vickie, sounding groggy. “Hold on.”

A few seconds later, she was back on the line. “I arrived at Mr. Lang's house at approximately six o'clock last night,” she said, sounding very much like she was reading a prepared statement. “I was in Mr. Lang's presence at all times until eleven o'clock, whereupon I drove myself back to my apartment in Madison.”

“Whereupon?” asked Darla. “Really, Vickie? When was the last time you used that word? Have you been reading the dictionary?”

“Listen, I was there, okay?” said Vickie. “And I wasn't tricking. It was a date thing. Hardy made me dinner. A big slew of vegetables. Don't tell Conway. He don't allow us to fraternize.”

“I doubt the subject will come up.”

“I got something else to say,” said Vickie. “I'm sorry Officer Elvis got his, even though he never did sound like Elvis. And then there was that one time he did try to get out of paying the full fee for a lap dance in the Champagne Room. That redneck shorted me twenty bucks 'cause he didn't like my technique. But I let that go a long time back.”

“Yeah, it sounds like you moved on.”

“I ain't killed Tommy, as Jesus is my savior.”

“You're not a suspect,” said Darla.

“Praise Jesus. So, if it wouldn't be impolite, I'd like to go back to sleep, get the rest of my beauty rest.”

“I wouldn't want to keep you from that.” Darla told Vickie goodbye, and turned her attention to Tommy's cellphone records for the week before the car bombing. There were four or five calls every day between Tommy and Cill, twenty-nine calls in all. Most of the time it was Tommy calling her. Not all that unusual for a man said to be smitten. There were also a dozen back-and-forths between Tommy and the main number for the Hinds County Sheriff's Department. Plus a half dozen calls between Tommy and L. N. McClure. That raised a red flag, though it wouldn't do any good to ask McClure what the calls were about. It was a client-attorney thing, and McClure couldn't discuss the subject or content of the calls even if he wanted to.

Darla came across ten calls from a business listed as ETA International Inc. The first call was made a week before Tommy was killed. It lasted fifteen minutes. The remaining nine calls were made the day of his murder. The short duration of each of them suggested they all went directly into Tommy's voice mail. The caller didn't leave a message and Tommy never returned any of the calls. Who was trying to get in touch with Tommy on the day of his murder and why? Sans any other active leads, this seemed like the time to find out.

“ETA International,” the woman on the other end of the line said, when Darla called. “Have a blessed day.”

“Excuse me,” said Darla, “but I'm trying to reach Electrical Technicians Associates. That wouldn't be you, would it?”

“I'm afraid not,” said the woman. “ETA is short for Elvis Tribute Artists.”

“Oh, so you're an association for Elvis impersonators,” asked Darla, sounding as friendly as she could.

“We don't favor the word
impersonator,
” the woman replied. “We're a talent-booking agency. We represent the top Elvis tribute artists in the world. Is this something you're interested in?” Darla's questions seemed to have made the woman uncomfortable.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” said Darla and ended the conversation.

Checking the street address she found ETA International was located in the newly rehabbed Union Life Insurance building in downtown Jackson. Just three blocks away.

The building directory in the Union Life lobby said ETA International was in Suite 1600. They were the only tenants on the sixteenth floor.

Suite 1600 turned out to be an impressive-sized reception room and an inner office. The walls looked freshly painted and the furniture smelled like they'd just taken off the plastic wrap. Three of the four walls of the reception room were adorned with photos of Elvis at various stages in his illustrious career. The fourth wall behind the receptionist desk contained a built-in display case filled with dozens of Elvis bobbleheads, many of which bore little resemblance to the King of Rock and Roll.

The
have a blessed day
lady was a plumpish woman with frosted hair who occupied the chair behind the reception desk. When Darla approached her desk, she seemed to be posting a comment on her Facebook page and didn't look up.

“I'm Detective Cavannah, from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.”

The woman stopped in mid-post and her head shot up. Darla showed the woman her ID and badge. The woman got a sheepish expression on her face. “Honest,” she said, “I wasn't doing personal posting. I was doing research. What can I do for you…” She paused. “…Detective?”

“Maybe you can clear something up for me,” said Darla. “Most of those bobbleheads in the display case, they don't look that much like Elvis.”

“Those are our ETAs,” said the woman. “Every Elvis tribute artist we represent gets his likeness on a bobblehead. It generates extra income at concerts.”

“A facsimile of someone imitating Elvis,” said Darla. “Do a lot of people buy something like that?”

“We're having a two-for-the-price-of-one special right now,” said the receptionist. “Let me know if there's one you like.”

“What I'd like is to see whoever is behind that door.”

“That would be Mr. J. B. Caulder, our CEO,” the woman said. “I'll tell him you're here.” J.B. Another guy who uses initials, thought Darla. You'd think they'd just change their first names.

“May I say what this is in reference to?” the receptionist asked.

“I think he'll know why I'm here.”

“It's about Officer Elvis? The ETA that was killed?”

“Tell Mr. Caulder I'm on a tight schedule,” said Darla.

The woman got up from her chair and curtsied. She knocked softly on the interior room door like she was afraid of waking a sleeping ogre.

The seating area in the reception room had a small sofa and a club chair arranged around a glass coffee table. The coffee table had a bust of Elvis etched into the top. Classy.

Occupying the sofa was a ponytailed guy in an expensive T-shirt, from which bulged well-muscled arms covered with tats. His eyes were glued to his phone. He was texting.

Darla sat in the opposite club chair. She crossed her legs; the .380 Taurus strapped to her ankle, as usual, was visible.

“You Hugh the Glue's wife?” Ponytail asked without looking up from his texting, like he'd made her when she first walked in the room.

“I was, yes,” she said. “Are you the bouncer in this place, Mr. …?”

“Marks,” he said, “Director of Transportation,” finally meeting her eyes and shrugging his shoulders. “The tribute artists, they all like to sit in the backseat and be chauffeured around like they're big shots.”

Yeah, Marks was the muscle in the operation. “I've seen your photo somewhere before,” said Darla.

“Maybe it's social media,” he said, getting back to his texting. “You got a lot of Facebook friends?”

“No,” said Darla. “But I look at a lot of mug shots.”

“Oh,” said the guy. Nothing more. Like most strong-arm guys, he knew when the time had come to keep his mouth shut.

The receptionist returned to her desk and ten minutes of quiet went by before a thick-necked bald-headed guy, with a brown and gray soul patch on his chin and a prizefighter's scar above his left eye, poked his head out of the interior office. Dressed in a silk suit, he had the bearing of a New Jersey hood, but smiled big-time, the way Southerners do whether or not they are glad to see you. He signaled in Darla's direction like she was next in line and then turned and walked back into his office. The Director of Transportation didn't bother looking up.

The suit squeezed behind a desk that took up most of the room. J. B. Caulder let his tree stump of a body sink into an imitation leather swivel chair, and took a pull from a coffee cup that had a photo of Elvis with Richard Nixon on the front. Nixon had his arm around Elvis.

Darla found a seat opposite him in one of the two folding chairs.

“J. B. Caulder,” he said, with an accent that sounded like it had been dipped in the murkiest part of the delta swamps.

“I'm here about the death of Detective Tommy Reylander.”

Caulder put on his confused face, the kind you give the traffic cop when you're caught speeding and are about to play dumb. “I'm sorry, Detective,” he said, “but is it a donation you're looking for? Or perhaps you'd like to book one of our Elvises for the funeral? A tribute to the tribute artist?” That good ole boy smile again.

Darla took out her recorder and placed it on the desk. “I'm a lousy note taker,” she said. “It's easier if I record everything.”

Caulder studied the device for a second, and then looked down at the back of his right hand, appreciating what looked to be a fresh manicure. “Pray, proceed, Detective.”

“Someone from this office made ten calls to Detective Reylander's cellphone in the week before he was killed, nine of them on the day he was killed. Would that be you?”

“I'd have to check,” he said. “I don't keep track of all my calls. Much of my business is over the phone. What if it was me?”

“How many Elvis tribute artists does your company represent, Mr. Caulder?”

He diddled with his computer until the right page came up. “One hundred twenty-three nationally,” he said. “Here in Mississippi, eight. We handle only the premier ETAs.”

“So why all the calls to Tommy Reylander?”

“ETA International is always on the lookout for outstanding talent to expand our Elvis Empire,” said Caulder.

“You ever hear Tommy sing?”

“I have to admit, it was sometime back.”

“Then you know he could barely hold a tune.”

“That, of course, is merely one opinion,” said Caulder.

“I'd be comfortable putting it to a vote.”

Caulder shifted in his chair, and made a point of looking at his computer, acting like there was urgent business that needed his attention. “I'm sorry, but what is it exactly that you'd like to know, Detective? I'm sure you didn't come by merely to express your musical opinion.”

“Like I said, why all the calls to Tommy, Mr. Caulder?”

“You expect me to divulge the nature of private conversations?” asked Caulder.

“According to our records, there were a lot of calls but only
one
conversation,” said Darla. “You called Tommy nine times the day he was killed. All your calls went into his voice mail. He never returned one of them.”

Inhaling deeply, Caulder let his breath out slowly. He cleared his throat, and spoke with more feigned sincerity than before. “I wanted to buy Mr. Reylander's Cadillac for our various tribute artists to use. He rejected my first offer. We were in the process of negotiating.”

“How could you be negotiating if Tommy never called back?”

“What difference does that make at this point?” said Caulder, sounding a tad exasperated. “From what I saw on YouTube, the vehicle is damaged beyond repair.”

“You watched the explosion on YouTube?”

“Along with a half a million other viewers, the last time I checked. I try to stay abreast of the ETA industry. My livelihood depends on it.”

“How well did you know Tommy?”

“How well can one know anyone who doesn't return his calls?” said Caulder. Darla took it to mean that Caulder and Tommy had a connection, but Caulder wasn't going to talk about it.

“And where were you night before last, at say ten p.m.?”

Caulder smiled. “At last, the real question. As it turns out I was at a meeting with our board of directors in Hattiesburg.” Caulder checked his Rolex. Another I'm-short-on-time move.

“I'll need you to furnish me with a list of people who saw you there,” said Darla.

“My executive assistant will email it to you,” said Caulder. “Now, if you're planning an event and need an entertainer, I'd be more than happy to assist you
, Detective
. Otherwise…” He removed a small pack of business cards from his breast pocket, peeled one off, and handed it to Darla. “Maybe you'd like to talk to my attorney.”

She took the card. L
.
N
.
M
C
C
LURE,
E
SQUIRE,
it said.

“L. N. McClure was Tommy Reylander's lawyer, too,” said Darla, “but I'm guessing you already knew that.”

“Jackson really is a small city, isn't it?” Caulder said, turning back to his computer.

Darla wasn't buying the Cadillac story. The story fit but Caulder had only come up with it when she pressed him. Unfortunately, she'd run out of questions for now. She handed Caulder her card. “Tell your executive assistant—I assume that's the lady out front—I'll need the list by the end of the day.”

“Forgive me if I don't stand,” said Caulder, and turned back to his computer screen. As Darla reached the door, he said over his shoulder, “Help yourself to a free bobblehead on your way out. We have a large inventory.”